erysvoleil - Tumblr blog

[erysvoleil]

pikmin 1 and 2 and pikmin 3, pikmin new play control for the wii, pikmin 4 and 5, pikmin 6, pikmin 7, pikmin eighteen billion and eleven pikmin 3 deluxe and hey pikmin, pikmin temptation and pikmin sin, pikmin on your ipad its called pikmin bloom, brand new crossover with Pikmin and Doom

LOST BROWSER GAME PIKMIN SPACE... FORCE...

pikmin fortnite pikmin loamy clay and pikmin sand, pikmin adventure (nintendo land), pikmin coming to super smash brothers brawl, new sport i made where you throw pikmin ball pikmin on the gamecube where you can play it love it or hate it you will find it... pikmin on the gamecube where you can play it love it or hate it you will find it on there... (pikmin on the gamecube) (pikmin on the gamecube) (pikmin on the gamecube) (pikmin on the fucking gamecube)

[erysvoleil]

sometimes u just see some pinterest make-up looks and u gotta draw your blorbo... i'll probably draw more marionette regents at some point and try to get some that have his canon energy, this one was just for fun

[erysvoleil]

Astronaut Mark Kelly smuggled a gorilla suit into the ISS, without telling the rest of the crew

[erysvoleil]

[erysvoleil]

[erysvoleil]

[erysvoleil]

Basically

[erysvoleil]

Also while I'm thinking about paradise killer again (good game glad I played it) [also full spoilers because yeah] I think the thing that sticks out to me the most in the "no matter what you do, you didn't change the system" department is the conversation with henry you get if you actually manage to save him. If you actually jump through all the hoops and dig into all the side tangents to completely absolve him, completely get him off the hook of every single thing he's ever been accused of and he's still there in the "drive off into the sunset and/or do some extrajudicial executions" segment to chat with.

Because like. You've done all that. You've Won, with respect to his story, you've Stood Up for the little guy, saved the day. And he's still in prison. He's still a disposable human sacrifice who's getting left behind while the powers that be condemn this entire reality to oblivion. He's still got a demon screaming bloody murder inside him. All you've won for him is the right to watch the world end, a few more hours of breath before his inevitable execution.

And like, damn! That's really potent! It makes you think of the other ways he's unsaveable-you can't give him the like decade of his life he spent in prison on the earlier accusations back, you can't undo the fuckhell of his entire setup as a fall guy for the administration, his very conception being tied up in their bullshit games, you can't undo the way disposable underclass in this society has permanently eviscerated his social existence! And at least assuming my memory of it is intact enough, he's still pretty bitter about all of that! You cannot as the One Person magical Video Game Protagonist really do anything to save him! It's Quite Potent!

[erysvoleil]

AYYYY OHHHHH I MISMANAGE-A THE WEBSITE I BAN-A THE TRANSAGIRLS

[erysvoleil]

If we're asking about games on your list of favourites, as someone who adored Paradise Killer, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! I always enjoy your analysis.

so first of all the aesthetics of paradise killer are really good. usually games that were written in english but read like translations from japanese irritated me, but here i think it is very much leaned into and embraced as an aesthetic and set of cultural signifiers in its own right, which i really enjoy. the character designs are outlandish and charming. but what i really like about it is like, the way the core premise works

in most detective games, there is a correct answer, and not getting it is a failure state. you can't end a case in ace attorney with your innocent client being convicted, you can't get the wrong guy in the frogware sherlock holmes games. and this invariably, even if the game is critical in other aspects, tends to come around to a fundamental faith in the legal system and authority, right--something that's kind of baked into the detective genre at a fundamental level.

paradise killer upends that by simply saying "you are the detective. get the facts you need, make a compelling argument, and if the authorities above you believe you then you get to distribute justice as you see fit." you arrive on the island you're investigating and you're immediately told "hey, this member of a disenfranchised underclass did it, we've already arrested him, here's the evidence." and absolutely nothing stops you from taking that evidence and walking into the trial room and presenting it and saying "yep, he did it!" and beating the game! it's not a 'bad ending', you don't get a big popup saying 'you're wrong', the powers that be just accept the convenient narrative you've been given to present and everything moves on.

i like this from both, like, an ideological perspective, and also from an interpersonal stakes perspective. in most detective games, you can't miss a crucial piece of evidence, either because the game will not proceed until you pick it up or because you'll be forced to restart the 'trial' or 'deduction' segment when you game over because you're missing it. in paradise killer, whatever argument you put forward, if enough evidence supports it--even if you know for a fact it's wrong!--leads to the person you're accusing being executed. so the stakes are much higher, right, because instead of a game over screen and trying again, getting it wrong means that's just... how the game ends, with an innocent person being executed.

and more importantly i think it does a fantastic job--better imo even than something like disco elysium--at deconstructing the fantasy of justice. a constant theme of the game and something that the protagonist repeats often is "there is a difference between facts and the truth". you can withhold evidence at trial because it implicates your friends, or misrepresent it to implicate that bitch you hate. nothing in the system exists to stop you getting wrong, in fact your superiors encourage you to make the easy completely stritched up conviction and move on with your life.

and at the end, even if you get it right, if you catch all the criminals--all the time you spend investigating this island shows that, like, the society you're part of is fucking evil! you're all deranged immortals making constant human sacrifices to your evil gods! and you don't change that by solving the case, the whole thing just packs up and moves on. you don't get any comfortable resolution to that or to your role in it. you can play lady love dies as a diehard true believer or as a dissident rebel but either way she's ultimately just another cog in a machine, dispensing an alien and uncaring justice that is only attached to any real morality or truth by your decision to do so. a genuinely incredible game.

plus i like how whenever you open it a voice says 'paradise killer' so you know you're playing paradise killer

[erysvoleil]

theee undersiders

[erysvoleil]

Blake Thorburn of Pact, a complete (and lengthy) web serial about magic, demons, and bad karma, written by Wildbow.

(I previously uploaded this piece when I had forgotten his hair was lighter than I remembered - so this is the updated piece. Please reblog this one instead!)

[erysvoleil]

imagine being a totally normal resident of jacob’s bell and you see the reclusive heir of the local haunted mansion out in public for the first time and he’s standing in the Murder Weapon aisle at target with a cart full of chains, hatchets, ice picks, and like 20 bicycle mirrors for no discernible reason. meanwhile blake’s internal monologue is just “everyone’s staring at me. why’s everyone staring at me?” boy look at yourself

[erysvoleil]

happy pride from your friendly neighborhood diabolist

[erysvoleil]

I’m going to make you regret that

[erysvoleil]

it seems backwards but in fantasy fiction, large stakes of the story shrink the world.

like in Pact, it's like, oh no, if this demon gets loose, it could destroy the whole town! Which is a suburb of Toronto. So the story seems small. But what that means is that the world seems big. Stuff like this is going on everywhere.

if instead the heroes are trying to save the world, then they're presumably the only heroes trying to save the world. This story, with this small and easy to remember list of characters, is all that's going on.

One unique thing about Pact is that every fantasy story seems to be happening simultaneously, somewhere off-screen. The limited stakes of the story is one of the choices that made this possible.