#okay now i will go play pikmin

[takami-takami]

THANK U FOR THE TAG MWAH MWAH Was tagged by @aquadenks to rec some of my own fics so! Some author's notes too, spoiling the subtext lol but giving some behind the scenes info! I'm just gonna pick my favorites, not so much the ones I'd recommend.

For recomendations: Stray Dogs Will Crawl Home for sfw; How to Fix The Ache or Can't Help Myself for nsfw

My faves:

Nightmares. | angst, hurt/comfort

I wrote this to cope with the GRAGGGHH feeling after watching the Lady Nagant episode. Like I wrote this late as hell at night too in order to be normal. I like the way I wrote the panic, it was fun to try and tweak it to be more in character and make the body language and dialogue believable. I find his theme of corruption and being used by the hpsc and feeling shackled to be very interesting to explore. I had to write the boy being comforted for his past or I'd die.

I Think I Love You. | fluff

The cutest fic I ever wrote. Pure good feelings. I genuinely love this one, I think it's adorable and head-over-heels!Keigo is my weak spot. I giggled so hard to myself when I wrote about the platonic kiss to ground himself. He's so cute. Fuzzy feelings. Happy happy happy.

Happy Birthday. | angst

Pure angst. PURE angst.

I had this in my notes for a long while, actually, and had the idea in my head for longer. It's a catharsis piece, very personal. Whenever I would have a moment related to a Thing, I'd pull out my notes app and work on this and just vomit my feelings onto the page. I still remember stopping in the middle of grabbing groceries and pulling out my phone to type the "what did you make me do" part as soon as I thought of it. Typing outside on my phone like a madman. Very therapeutic. Even though it's my least popular fic (probably because of the subject matter and lack of x reader) it means a tremendous deal to me.

How To Fix The Ache. | smut

The smut fic of the bunch— HEAR ME OUT, this is one of my favorite smut fics so I picked it as a representative (My other favs are Crybaby, Accidents, and Sweet, Sweet Indulgence. Not including the mini drabbles. I can answer which of those I like if anyone's curious!). So I'm putting it here. KEIGO YANKING IT MY BELOVED!! I like the pacing here, the tension building, the payoff at the end where he mcLoses it. Sexually frustrated virgin mess Keigo :(((((.

A Dog Unfed. | angst, hurt/comfort

This is my most recent fic but also another favorite of mine! Literally helped me so bad to write this. Do not know where I would be if I didn't write it. I feel like, I honestly didn't want to turn this into a fanfic at first. It was just supposed to be a thing for only me to see about how I'm feeling because the feeling was overwhelming; but I wanted to share it, so I turned it into a thing with Hawks (which also helped a ton)! I think you can tell, at least in the beginning part. I break the fourth wall at the end a little which I thought was cool but definitely was worried about doing. I let go of a lot of inhibitions and a desire to Appeal to Others when writing this one. Like I told myself when I was writing over and over, "all my writings are mine but this one is Mine." Very special place in my heart. <3

But my FAVORITE fic is still being written. Idk when it will be finished though, it's a big one— I don't like posting chapter by chapter, so I'm just gonna finish all the chapters first and then slam it onto the table hopefully.

Tagging ANYONE steal this. :3

[ellenent]

Wait people don't like the dandori battles and challenges in pikmin 4?

[phantomrose96]

Hello I've now played Pikmin 3 and I'm beside myself with how Nintendo keeps doing Olimar like this.

After Olimar pays off President's whole debt (and then some) in Pikmin 2 he is... back on PNF-404 in Pikmin 3. Immediately. Like immediately. Because the President lost all their money again and he's sent Olimar and Louie back to PNF-404 again exactly the same as happens to Olimar in Pikmin 2 and this time there is absolutely an undercurrent of violence in Olimar's vlogs and logs. He WANTS bad things to happen to his boss.

But he's too polite and too composed so he's just keeping his cortisol levels down with elaborate fantasies of class revolution, and the mental countdown of how many days until he can get the FUCK off this planet and get home to his family for real. He was ship-wrecked and left for dead for 30 days in Pikmin 1 and fought and bled and killed for his own survival to make it back to his planet only to then IMMEDIATELY be sent back by his shitty awful boss to the planet for another ~30 days in Pikmin 2 (he hasn't seen his family yet) and then IMMEDIATELY is sent back in Pikmin 3 and he wants to go home. He wants to go home. His daughter sends him a message asking if he even lives with them anymore. I'm fucking beside myself.

THIS would all be... okay, at least, if Olimar actually got to go home. But No The Fuck He Doesn't. Because at the end of his mission he's kidnapped by concentrated pikmin nightmare fuel in the form of the game's final boss. Some non-corporeal omnipresent monstrosity which has kidnapped Olimar as a keepsake. A pet. A toy? Which allows Olimar just the chance to attempt an escape day after day before snatching him back and dragging him back to his eternal jail cell. The man who was just about to go home and finally see his family after 3 games.

You find his logs and he's just losing his mind, slowly. He knows he's never escaping. He's losing his will to try. He has nightmares of the pikmin turning on him. Louie's not coming back for him and the President isn't coming back for him.

Pikmin 1 is horror as Olimar is stranded alone with no one but himself to save him. His life support is damaged and he has only 30 days to repair his ship to get home, lest he die in the poisonous atmosphere of this planet. And it's horrifying but at least. At least. He had his own power to save himself. He makes progress steadily over the month. He has reason to keep his hope alive.

Pikmin 3 robs him of that. There is nothing under his own power he can do to escape the Plasm Wraith. His pikmin have all been killed. He's in an unwinnable Saw trap. And this time his life support system isn't damaged. It's the only thing worse than damaged - it's completely functional.

Given that, playing as the Koppaite trio, there is no time limit to save Olimar, I can only conclude Olimar's suit is fully functional this time. He has no food, no water, no chance to ever change out of his suit, but it keeps him alive. He's the Plasm Wraith's prisoner for as long as that suit will keep him alive. Indefinitely, maybe. Unless he could work up the nerve to remove his helmet himself and just end it...

But he doesn't. Day after day he tries to escape until he doesn't have the strength anymore. His suit forces him to sleep more and more, against his will, as a life preservation method. So he's forced to fade in and out of consciousness as this thing's prisoner. And this is forever. Until he dies.

The Koppaite trio rescuing him is pure coincidence. They were on PNF-404 for reasons completely divorced from Olimar. They should never have cared who he was or where he was. Olimar just happened to come across their warp drive key when they crashed, and he picked it up, right before the Plasm Wraith took him. They find him for the warp drive key. The Koppaite trio weren't supposed to save Olimar. No one was supposed to save Olimar.

And how. Awful. Because this time people KNOW Olimar is on PNF-404. President is back home on Hocotate and knows he's lost contact with Louie and Olimar. He could send help but he doesn't. He could COME to help but he doesn't. Olimar isn't waywardly alone this time. He's abandoned. And abandoned by the man who forced him into this danger.

And depending how well you play, and how many fruits you get as the Koppaite trio, a normal run is probably 20-30 days for them BEFORE you rescue Olimar. He was taken soon after they landed. So a month. Another month. Of Olimar stranded on this planet. Worse than ever before, as he's nothing but the mouse being played with by this world's cruelest cat. He hasn't been allowed to take off his space suit for a month... After ~30 days of Pikmin 1 and ~30 of Pikmin 2 and now ~30 of Pikmin 3. His daugher thinks he doesn't live with them anymore...

And then... okay and then... the Koppaite trio rescue him... They offer to bring him home. And Olimar's beside himself because he never thought he was getting off this planet. Someone's shown kindness to him for the first time in 3 games and it takes him by absolute surprise.

He and Louie get home.

AND THE PRESIDENT CALLS THEM IDIOTS FOR LOSING THEIR SHIP AND SENDS THEM IMMEDIATELY BACK TO GET THE SHIP

THE PLASM WRAITH IS STILL THERE AND ALIVE.

IT IS LEGALLY AND ETHICALLY ALLOWED FOR OLIMAR TO KILL HIS BOSS.

[thankskenpenders]

There have been some interesting bits of Sonic-related news lately! This is the post where I comment on them.

Sonic Superstars

Finally! A new Sonic sidescroller! It's been too long.

Admittedly, in a perfect world, I would've wanted a Sonic Mania 2, but I'll take a 2.5D game with all new zones for sure, especially when the art direction for it looks this nice. And four-player co-op with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles AND Amy playable? Hell yeah. Also Fang is back, and there's a new funny little guy designed by Naoto Ohshima! Wow!

There's been some concern over how this will play, particularly after it was discovered it's being co-developed by Ohshima's company Arzest. They're perhaps best known for some mediocre Nintendo games like Yoshi's New Island, Hey! Pikmin, and the 3DS version of Mario & Sonic 2016, as well as, of course... co-production on Balan Wonderworld. The thing is, Arzest is very much one of those "silent collaborator" type companies. They're hired gun developers who do the grunt work on projects for other studios without being put in the spotlight. The quality of their games isn't really up to Arzest, who are presumably just doing whatever they're directed to do with whatever resources they're allotted. It's up to their publishers.

Based on the side-by-side physics comparisons that have been going around Twitter, it seems clear that SOMEONE on this project is invested in making Superstars play just like the classic games. I'm admittedly no Sonic physics purist, but the extended gameplay footage (with placeholder music from Sonic 4 Episode 2) looks spot on to me. Christian Whitehead also seems to know things about the game, stating that "the Mania physics were indeed fully translated to modern 3D." It seems that at the very least they consulted his previous work on this, regardless of whether or not he's actually involved.

But even if this ends up not being true, honestly, I'll take a new Sonic sidescroller that's "just okay" if it has all new zones, nice art direction, and good music. If Sonic 4 had checked those three boxes but played exactly the same, I would've been way more into it.

Really, it's the music that has me most concerned. Obviously we all love Jun Senoue, but hearing he's trying to do "classic-style" music again makes me worry that he's gonna bust out the fake Genesis synths. I'm actually a weirdo who likes the Classic Sonic stage themes in Forces, but those weren't by Senoue, whose otherwise very strong compositions were really hurt by the sound palette chosen for Sonic 4. Like many others, I'd prefer it if Superstars went for the new jack swing sound of Sonic Mania - and considering Tee Lopes is contributing, hopefully he's allowed to tap into that sound a little. But I'd be open to other styles, too. I just really don't think a game with HD visuals should be going for a fake 16-bit sound.

But yeah, overall, I'm looking forward to Superstars. I think we've needed something like this for a long time, and I'm glad they're finally doing it.

Sega union update

We don't have many details on this, but the newly forming Sega of America union, AEGIS-CWA, is facing resistance from management. Apparently some form of "anti-union campaign" (their wording) is underway, also described more worryingly as "relentless attempts at union busting." We unfortunately don't have more details right now, and it seems like no news outlets are doing anything with this story.

This behavior is unfortunately not surprising, even from a company that purports progressive values like Sega. Remember kids: corporations are not your friends.

In the face of this, the members of AEGIS-CWA are still trying to convince management to stay neutral with the help of their fan petition that raised over 4300 signatures. At the time of writing this, their first union election is also underway. I continue to wish them luck in their efforts. We're currently seeing a wave of unionization attempts the likes of which we've never seen before, and I have to hope that at least some of them stick. We need real change in the game industry, an industry where if you're able to stick around longer than ten years without burning out then you're one of the lucky ones.

Okay now time for the thing y'all really wanted me to comment on

Penders says he's leaving Twitter

Earlier this month, Penders announced: "Since Twitter is promoting anti-trans nonsense, I can’t in good conscience continue to be associated with it much longer."

He's certainly not wrong. Elon's been doubling down on his transphobic fearmongering, and Twitter's already weak moderation of hate speech has only gotten even weaker. (They quietly removed their rule against intentional misgendering in April.) But based on the date he tweeted this, I assume Ken was referring specifically to Elon promoting Matt Walsh's shit ass transphobic documentary, which Elon personally allowed to be hosted on Twitter in its entirety. I'd quit the site myself if it didn't feel necessary to promote my work and stay connected with my peers. (Both the furry community and the gamedev sphere are very much centered on Twitter.) Assuming Ken does actually leave in protest, hey, good on him.

There's been some surprise over the fact that he's apparently a trans ally, but for all his many flaws, Penders has always been your average baby boomer Democrat. Half his tweets are about hoping Trump goes to jail. He has many outdated views that he refuses to unpack (I am not going to devolve this post into a catalog of stupid shit he's tweeted), but he at least understands that "progressive" is a thing you should try to be. He's that uncle who you wouldn't go to for a nuanced view on queer identity, but like, he knows trans people exist and are discriminated against and that that's bad.

Of course, instead of just leaving Twitter, he's announced that he intends to leave by September 30th, after which point people will have to contact him via his website. The idea of someone scheduling a date four months in the future on which they're going to leave a social media platform in protest is very, very funny to me. I wonder if he has something planned for September that needs to happen first - like, you know, maybe finally releasing at least a portion of The Lara-Su Chronicles?

Lord knows when the hell we'll be able to read the first part of the comic, but in the near future you WILL be able to buy THIS on a t-shirt!

Wait did he change that one character from Anthony Mackie to Ernie Hudson???

Anyway, my one hope is just that even if he does leave Twitter, he doesn't delete his account. His tweets have long been one of my most important sources for behind the scenes info on Archie Sonic, even if you do have to take some of it with a grain of salt. Gallagher and Bollers are simply not going on Twitter and talking about this stuff on a regular basis like Ken does. With so many old forums and fan sites now gone, only partially preserved by the Wayback Machine, Ken deleting his Twitter would truly be the burning of the library of Alexandria for old Archie Sonic behind the scenes drama.

You know, assuming he actually does leave Twitter.

...

Aaaand that about does it for Sonic-related news lately, I think? Okay, back to my hiatus. I would still like to get back to updating sometime this year, but I'm still in recovery mode following SLARPG's launch, so I can't promise when that'll be. I appreciate everyone's continued patience!

[spitblaze]

do you have any recommendations for people going to japan?

do you have any recommendations for 3ds/ds/etc games someone could play on a 14 hour plane ride to japan?

Reccomendations for Japan, like in general?? Kinda vague, but lemme think and also tag @doktorpeace and @draayder for their thoughts too

-If you're going to Tokyo, Kabukicho is a MUST. It's the entertainment district! If there's anywhere in Tokyo you're not gonna look like a dumbass for walking around and gawking at things. It's Kabukicho. And there's plenty to gawk at! The square outside of Toho theater usually has something going on, there's TONS of small music venues, @doktorpeace once said something like 'you could eat at a different restaurant every day for every meal for a year and not run out of good places to eat in Kabukicho' and they are SO right. As a bonus if you've ever played a Yakuza/LaD/RGG game you almost definitely know most of the layout already. Kabukicho is not hard to navigate at all, and I'm sure that's intentional. Anyway. Go to Kabukicho. Explore the Don Quixote. Eat the food. Take a picture with the Godzilla statue. 10/10

-Honestly? I expected Harajuku to be a lot more expensive than it was, but then again the USD has more buying power than usual in Japan? Anyway the thing about Tokyo is that people there are intimidatingly trendy, I went there and now I understand why Splatoon is like that, the youths of Tokyo will wear their heavy black visual kei outfits during record-breaking heatwaves because fashion is THAT important. Anyway it's real easy to find good-quality clothes for reasonable prices there, and also a bunch of thrift shops full of cool stuff! You'll find a sweater for any American pro or college sports team you can think of and that's a promise. Fair warning, shibuya thrifting will not be significantly cheaper than regular retail, unless you're shopping for traditional Japanese clothing, in which case you absolutely should and I reccomend a store called Chicago, they had a HUGE selection. Spinns is a good store too, they also have a website that I keep meaning to order stuff from.......

-Osaka is really cool, but if you're there you're gonna want to stop by the Amerika-mura part of town. Very cool, very artsy, it feels kinda like Shibuya, if Shibuya was more like New York? Kinda?? The point is that it's VERY cool over there, there's a lot of art and neat places to get snacks and clothing stores. Absolutely check it out if you can

-the best burger I've ever had in my life was the kobe beef burger at Kokopelli. The guy who runs the place spent a lot of time in the states. I greeted him in Japanese and he said back 'hey guys what's up' in a perfect Midwestern accent. Anyway extremely good. Get some burgers there if you can

As for video games...... @doktorpeace played through Pokemon Ultra Sun on the plane ride. Don’t do that. Just play regular Sun/Moon. I was playing a lot of Octopath Traveler 2 and The World Ends With You Neo on that trip myself, and my partners both took turns with Pikmin 4 (which had just come out).

If you have a 3ds, basically any Shin Megami Tensei game you can get running on there would be a good choice, I personally reccomend SMT4/SMT4 Apocalypse and SMT Soul Hackers in terms of native hardware, I'm sure you could get the PS1 smt on there with some homebrewing and elbow grease, it can emulate basically everything up to the Sega Saturn just fine. Also Etrian Odyssey is really good, play the Untold versions on 3ds for 1 and 2 and the re-release on Switch for 3. 4, 5, and Nexus are all 3ds native. There's also a mystery dungeon game but it's only okay.

But uuuuuuh if you have like...a steam deck there's a LOT of Baldur's Gate. Like a lot. This game is huge. There are also two entire Psychonauts games! Did you know that?? Did you know you can play Psychonauts?? Did you know that is a game y

[yung-goos]

//possible pikmin 4 spoilers

ughHHH ok no I must talk about Pikmin 4. I needa gush. It's safe to say I will be playing every other pikmin game in the near future because I. am. in. love. With the concept, the aesthetic, the gameplay, my lovely little men called pikmin, OATCHIIIIII, just.... Pikmin gained a new fan quickly. Took me a lil while to find my groove, but once I found it I couldn't put it down. Something about having a gameplay cycle thats unique, interesting, and revolves around being as efficient as possible just *chefs kiss* can't be beat. And Pikmin 4 does it in a way where it isn't stress inducing or daunting. Its like a nice slow trickle feed, and the difficulty curve doesn't like, suddenly get hard out of no where. Theres a clear point where you're like okay the shits getting real. Like okayyy now I have to actually sit here and think??? But like, half way through doing the first dandori battle I realized you could restart, and a couple tries later realized I could just use Oatchi to manage a lot of the carrying for the heavy shit by himself while I multi-task with my captain. And just.... yea it was a wrap after that lmao. Utterly destroying the dandori battles when I came across them (yea fuck you LOUIE). The dandori challenges though were tricky and required a lot of planning and restarting in order to plat them, but I loved every second of it. And just.... The ENVIRONMENTSSSS. I think just looking up and getting a look at where I was at was one of my favourite things to do. Realizing you're walking around through a lil garden, or a campfire grill, or a toy castle, or some kind of animal exhibit, or a sandbox, or a sand castle. And the HOMEEE. Or should I say "large giant structure". Like goddd the amount of charm is insane. Reading the descriptions for all the treasure too was a big fave of mine. Mock Bottom, Foolish Fruit, Unbreakable Promise, Connection Detector, Buddy Display, Personal Injury Plank, Wave Racer for the Nintendo Gamecube. Just UGHHH the CHARM™. I think the only thing I'd say I'd dislike is the dialouge from the characters. As someone who likes to be thorough, a lot of it felt uneccesary after awhile. Cute and funny at times, esp the little Pikmin people talk (the little "Oh n-no" Collin likes to do and the lil "Ki-morrray" Shepherd does has been STUCK and I mean STUCK in my head) but yea. It'll be nice going back and playing Pikmin games that arent so dialogue heavy, so I hear. Speaking of which, thats the one downside to starting with Pikmin 4, all the quality of life changes I'm sure they added to 4 isn't going to be present. Cuz you mean I have to fight shit...... without Oatchi..... I'm still not used to losing pikmin..... its going to be a slaughter if I don't have my boy with me. But yea, that'll be stress I tackle another day. Anywho, amazing game, definitely up there with Bomb Rush and TOTK as my GOTYs, and I'm sooo looking forward to playing more Pikmin in general. To think, I may have not been convinced to purchase this so soon if it weren’t for dunkeys glowing review. I always knew I wanted to play Pikmin, which is why I always avoided reading anything about it (which was easy theres like 20 maybe 35 pikmin fans at most).

also yea Groovy Long Legs remains my top fave out of all the bosses. Hands down. So good.

also also yea I understand why its fuck Louie now. Really wish we got to hear Nelle chew his ass out with their little "talk" Hmph.

[overnightshipping]

So I completed Pikmin 4 on Thursday with all treasures, all onions, and all castaways rescued. Basically everything except going back to platinum the Dandori challenges, which I probably don't care about but maybe someday. As promised, I have a lot of thoughts on Pikmin 4.

In some ways, Pikmin 4 is truly the Pikmin game that I have wanted since I originally got hooked on Pikmin and Pikmin 2 on the Gamecube. It is grand, expansive, and polished in a very Nintendo way. It brings back many fan favorite elements from the previous 3 numbered Pikmin games and expands upon them, adding its own unique twists and interesting concepts. It dives further into the society of weird little interplanetary explorers you play as than any previous game, expanding them across multiple planets (since apparently they sure do have a lot of planets). It was a very enjoyable experience and one that I don't find it difficult to recommend.

In other ways, it is a game that in making itself as marketable as possible has lost the charm of Pikmin. It is a game that feels at odds with itself, a game that loses some of the most potent elements that made Pikmin a compelling strategy game. I have seen at least one person liken it to a collectathon platformer moreso than a strategy game, and while I don't think that is completely accurate I think it clearly outlines one of Pikmin 4's biggest, most prevalent problems: the lack of strategy in a strategy game. It's a game that is terrified to punish the player, presumably in an overcompensation for the previous games not selling well and Nintendo thinking it was because they were too hard.

I don't want to make this a full on review, but let me see if I can make some sense of my thoughts under the cut. There will be full game spoilers, both for before and after the credits roll.

The first warning sign for Pikmin 4 was how slow, tedious, and long-lasting the introduction is. In previous games you had a single day of tutorial, giving you the ropes, and often had characters chime in for extra things you needed to learn afterwards, like what different Pikmin types did, but it was never so annoying as 4. 4 makes you go through multiple ingame days where the characters laboriously explain to you everything and admonish you if you try to go off on your own - the games point you directly at the first cave and if you don't go there IMMEDIATELY the game yells at you to do so. Thankfully after a few days it finally gets less overzealous, but damn was it a poor first impression.

Unfortunately, it only gets a bit less overzealous, because the characters do. Not. Shut. UP. In Pikmin 4 you have a crew of rescue explorers (who you save) who just are constantly chiming in from the peanut gallery. All the way into the very end of the game will characters remind you that you have Pikmin sprouts to pluck, or tell you to go attack the enemy's weakpoint, or whistle at Pikmin if they catch on fire, or say "aw man it's so sad we lost so many Pikmin, if only we could turn back time" not-so-subtly hinting at the game's (fine and appreciated for newer players) accessibility feature to rewind to certain points and undo mistakes. By the end of the adventure I wanted to strangle Collin in particular who is the worst offender.

The game chirps these "helpful tips" at you when you are doing the post-credits challenge mode that is explicitly the hardest part of the game! For fuck's sake! I know how the play the game by now!

This brings me to the game's accessibility options, which are much appreciated even if I wish they were less imposed on the player. You can rewind time to an extent if you need to undo things, and if you ever get lost you can get your dog to sniff up a path on where to go next. Now, I wish the game wasn't constantly telling me to use these features I didn't want to use, but I'm glad they are here. Pikmin 4 is definitely the most accessible Pikmin game and I think that is worthy of praise, even if I have some (okay maybe a lot of) gripes on how exactly they were implemented.

Speaking of the dog, I was skeptical about how it would be implemented but I largely really enjoyed Oatchi. He essentially takes the place of having a second captain and it works quite well. The big highlight is that Oatchi has different capabilities from your captain, which means you have to put some additional thought into which character you want where. This is at its best in the nighttime missions, where the captain is the only one who can use the Glow Pikmin's powerful glow bomb blast thing which is an extremely useful tool for dealing with the nastier enemies.

Unfortunately, Oatchi also kind of... is overpowered as hell. The main thing you will use Oatchi for is to carry Pikmin - when playing as Oatchi or riding him as a captain, your Pikmin will all cling to Oatchi's back instead of following behind in a group. This is extremely useful against bosses in particular, since it means you can dodge enemy attacks directly rather than having to manage the horde of Pikmin following you. Because a bunch of the bosses are ported over from Pikmin 1 and 2, this trivializes them in a not insignificant way. Man At Legs is a great example, as it is absolutely pathetically easy in Pikmin 4 since you don't even have to think about Pikmin management, just circle strafe with Oatchi while it's shooting and you'll never lose a Pikmin. This is not even taking into account how powerful Oatchi's charge and carrying abilities get when you upgrade them.

The best bosses in the game, unsurprisingly, are the two Pikmin 4 original bosses that feel actually designed with Oatchi's mobility in mind, the Groovy Long Legs and the final boss. These are also the only bosses that come close to the complexity and satisfaction of Pikmin 3's boss fights, since the game eschews boss encounters tied to going to new areas entirely, which is a damn shame since if it was going to take anything from 3 that would have been a great thing to take.

Speaking of things to take from 3 which I hate, the lock on. It sucks! I didn't like it much in Pikmin 3 but at least there there was still a bit of strategy in needing to aim after the lock on to hit enemies in particular weakpoints, and at least it was manually triggered. In Pikmin 4 you automatically lock your cursor to everything as you pass the cursor by it. This has two effects:

It can be quite annoying to try and get the cursor where you want it, and heaven help you if you want to aim at something which the game doesn't lock onto. For example, Skitter Leafs hide as leaves and then skitter when you approach, but you can instant kill them if you throw a Pikmin on top. Your lock on works when they are revealed, but when they are hiding it doesn't. This means that if you have killed a Skitter Leaf but there are others hiding nearby, you just can't even try to kill the ones that are hiding since your cursor will be locked onto the corpse your Pikmin can carry. This annoyance only happened a few times, but boy howdy is it annoying when it does crop up.

More importantly, it trivializes aiming at enemies. Throwing Pikmin in Pikmin 1 and 2 was a skill you could get better at - if you throw Pikmin near a Dwarf Bulborb, they would attack it, but if you threw a Pikmin directly on top of one they would kill it in one shot. This incentivized getting a feeling for the throwing arc of Pikmin and carefully lining up your shots to kill enemies quicker and safer. In Pikmin 4 you just... lock on automatically, and can throw a Pikmin and kill the Bulborb in one shot and go about your day. This wouldn't be so bad if so many enemies weren't ported over from Pikmin 1 and 2 directly - enemies like Shearwigs, Flint Beetles, and Breadbugs aren't balanced with the lock on in mind and as a result feel impotent. The only thing the game does to acknowledge this at all is make other Dwarf Bulborb types need two or three Pikmin to kill them, which... doesn't help much.

To swing back into things I like: the Pikmin types! The way Pikmin are introduced is reinvented and works really really well. You get Red Pikmin first with their Onion as normal, but after that you will find other colors of Pikmin in caves as wild Pikmin, or with the help of Candypop Buds, and integrate them into your team without having their Onion and thus being unable to grow their numbers manually. However, you can also find each color's Onion somewhere in the world, allowing you to raise as many as you want just like normal. This is really cool! It means that every Pikmin type (except Reds and arguably Yellows) gets a chance to be rare and important, really making you second guess how you approach things in case you lose out on those Pikmin that you might need for other things. This hit home for me when I was doing a cave with Blues and Ices, and was having trouble killing an Aristocrab. I finally killed it, but my Blue numbers had dwindled to the point that I couldn't carry a treasure out. That's cool! I love having to deal with the consequences of my actions. I ended up being put in a situation where I could keep charging forward into new areas and hope that I found more Blues or I could backtrack because I thought I had seen a Blue Onion in an area I was in before but couldn't get to it, but maybe I can now...

The one issue I have with how the Pikmin are given to the player is that the way means they aren't very well paced. Since it is essentially tied to whatever caves the player goes into, it is perfectly possible to get to the credits before even finding every Pikmin type - this happened to me, actually, as I got my first Winged Pikmin post-credits. It's a far fling from the careful metering out of the types in 1-3, but I think it largely works well outside of some pacing issues.

Speaking of pacing, this game really wants to be an open world in some ways, it's kind of silly. The areas are all bigger than normal and, as aforementioned, there aren't mandatory bossfights to get to the next area anymore. Your ability to explore is just tied to the Sparklium you collect, which has its pros and cons. Hell, Pikmin 4 even has a menu clearly riffing on the minimalist approach of BotW for some reason.

Luckily, this mostly works. The areas are great! The caves are also great! Everything feels really satisfying to explore, aided by the cool new feature to move your base to one of several predetermined areas on the map once you have found them (and usually killed an enemy on top of them). It's really fun to be able to take different approaches on each of the maps depending on where you plop down your ship and Onion.

Unfortunately, Pikmin 4 completely whiffs the "exploring a hostile alien planet" theme and tone. Every cave has a little "intro card" penned by Olimar explaining roughly what to expect in it, often spoiling the sense of discover when plunging in. New concepts are similarly explained - in previous games, Candypop Buds are shown to the player, the player is suggested that the Pikmin want to be thrown into them, and so the player tries and, in so doing, discovers what they do. In Pikmin 4, Candypop Buds are shown to the player, and the player gets a little explanation by Olimar and the other characters as to exactly what they do before the player has a chance to experiment. It's a subtle change, but when it applies to much of the game it really stands out.

The planet's hostility is a joke this time around. If you, like me, were a bit underwhelmed at how Pikmin 3 was easier than Pikmin and Pikmin 2, I have bad news: Pikmin 4 is even easier. I wouldn't even have that much of a problem with this if it weren't for one key thing that ruins it for me: enemies never respawn.

This is the single thing that bothers me most about Pikmin 4. In previous games, the choice to continue to explore a single area or go to a different one was one you made thoughtfully, because while your progress would be saved, over time enemies would respawn and you would have to deal with them again. Certain areas would even spawn harder enemies after enough time had passed, meaning that even in Pikmin 2 where there was no omnipresent day-based time limit to the game, there was still an incentive to go quickly - too long and that Snagret would be back, or a Sheargrub would chew up your bridge, or you would have to deal with a Beady Long Legs where one wasn't before.

Pikmin 4 takes this away entirely, which makes the game feel artificial in a way that the others didn't. Where once was a living, breathing world which actively continued on when you weren't looking now there is a bunch of video game levels where you can kill a Bulborb on day one and come back on day fifteen to pick up its corpse for Pikmin sprouts. It sucks, and is even worse in caves. When I went back to that cave from before where I needed to get a treasure but didn't have enough Blue Pikmin, I expected to at least need to fight that Aristrocrab again, to fight it smarter so I would still have Pikmin ready to carry the treasure. Instead it was still dead, its body still right where I had left it, and I just picked up the treasure with no obstacles in my way whatsoever. Where is the challenge, the satisfaction of holding your own against a hostile environment? Where is the friction? This change baffles me.

It's one thing to make a game easier to appeal to a wider audience, but it feels like another to me to make it so easy that you remove the satisfaction from actually besting its challenges. It would be one thing if this was an optional difficulty mode, or something, but Pikmin 4 has no such thing. And this is all on top of the copious ways that the game is made easier for the player optionally, such as the items that you can use to trivialize most enemy encounters.

The OTHER thing that I absolutely hate about Pikmin 4 is that it is a reboot for some reason. Despite being the fourth numbered entry in the series, and despite Nintendo seemingly going out of their way to port the rest of the series to Switch prior to 4's release, Pikmin 4 is a reboot, retelling Olimar's original trip to the Pikmin planet with a lot more shenanigans. I guess they did this because they wanted the whole dogs through-line to be more important to the Pikmin planet's history? It's a strange decision that didn't need to be made, and mostly serves to further make this feel like this is less a game for Pikmin fans and more a game desperately trying to appeal to everyone but.

This is a lot of text complaining about Pikmin 4, but I do want to emphasize that I really did enjoy the game. It might have beaten out Pikmin 3 for my third favorite in the franchise by its quality of content and enjoyable design. I just really truly wish it were more Pikmin and less anything but Pikmin. It feels like Pikmin has lost its character in favor of being a more generic Nintendo family friendly franchise for kids, and that's a shame.

Okay, final random comments, mostly nitpicks:

They brought Smoky Progg back which should really excite me but a loading screen tip spoiled it for me and it shows up so many times - not to mention when it does show up having nothing to do with its unique and fucked up "summoning" in Pikmin - that is dulls the impact for me. Makes me sad.

Puffstool is back but not Mushroom Pikmin??? This is baffling why even bother bringing back a fan favorite enemy if you don't bring back the reason why it was a fan favorite.

I alluded to this earlier but Groovy Long Legs fucking rules, I'm a little sad it didn't get an encore in the final boss rush dungeon. Definitely a highlight moment for me.

It's really silly that the Piklopedia entries basically only make sense if Pikmin 1-3 still happened despite the game obviously being a reboot lmfao. What the hell is a Beady Long Legs or a Ranging Bloyster, Olimar? I've never heard of these before they sound like they are from an alternate timeline or something.

I hate how many enemies just have a bigger version as a miniboss. It feels really unimaginative for Pikmin in a way that really bugs me.

Why did they remove the Pikmin dragging long enemies to the Onion from Pikmin 3, that was suitably macabre in a satisfying way. Carrying a curled up Snagret just isn't the same.

It's funny that they introduced this new baby Snagret enemy but then had like one Snagret outside of challenge rooms.

Purple and Whites finally got Onions and this made me very happy. :) It felt like a good reward for the challenge area. Speaking of the Onion I love it visually in this one, the colored segments look great.

It's very telling of the difficulty of this game in general that the hardest caves BY FAR are the final cave (as a lengthy boss rush thing) and the Waterwraith's cave they ported from Pikmin 2. Which wasn't even a late game cave in Pikmin 2 it was near the middle.

The three Pikmin types at a time felt too stifling to me, a limit makes sense but I feel like they could have made some cool puzzles around 4-5 types at a time. Also three at a time doesn't evenly divide into 100 which is obviously agonizing. Also I really hoped the final dungeon would go crazy and set me up to have every Pikmin type but nah.

[askroahmmythril]

Wall o’ Text : The Nintendo Direct

Figured I may as well type up my thoughts on everything from the Direct.  I have it going in the background to remember everything that was shown.  So yeah, if you care about trailer spoilers, now’s your chance to bail, yo.

So let’s get to it, and hopefully not get interrupted by another powerout.

1) Pokemon ScVi DLC - I’m looking forward to these.  ScVi can be a buggy mess, but I still overall enjoyed the games.  Since I’m not super competitive, I don’t look at a bunch of new legendaries as “OH GOD WHAT WILL THIS DO TO THE META QUICK BAN EVERYTHING,” I just see them as “Oh, cool, new things to collect and train, yay!” I do however hope there are still some things they might be hiding.  I’d like to see some new Paradox forms show up.

2) Sonic Superstars - Honestly looks pretty good.  I do wonder if we might get more characters as DLC.  I’d especially love to see what a Classic style Cream would look like.

3) Palia - ...... (checks “cozy farm sim off the bingo sheet”)  Nothing really stood out to me here, other than the phrase “free to play,” meaning microtransaction heck.  No thanks.

4) Persona 5 Tactica - Tactics games usually aren’t a go to for me, though this looks maybe more like the kind of tactics used in things like Mario + Rabbids, which I enjoyed, so I might be interested in this one?  Not super high priority, but on the radar.

5) Mythforce - This honestly might be on the “I’ll want to see more” list.  The artstyle is actually pretty dang nice, it definitely captures that He-Man style saturday morning cartoon look.

6) New Splatfest - Well, I can’t play online, don’t even HAVE Splatoon 3, but as far as choice, I’m torn between Strawberry or Mint Chip, love both of those.  But hey, Vanilla is good too.  Honestly hard to pick on this one.

7) Detective Pikachu Returns - Okay, was NOT expecting that.  I enjoyed the original, so definitely happy for it.

8) Super Mario RPG Remaster - Oh gods it looks beautiful.  It’s one of the rare RPGs that I really did enjoy, so I’ll likely be interested in this one.

9) Untitled Peach Game - Intrigued, but we know like, nothing.

10) Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon Port - I have the 3DS game, but never actually played it, so this might spur me to do so.

11) Batman : Arkham Trilogy - I might actually want this.  I loved Assylum and City, never got to play Knight, but I quite enjoyed the ones I did play.  A case of “wouldn’t mind an excuse to play them again.”

12) Gloomhaven - No real strong thoughts on this one admittedly.

13) Just Dance 2024 Edition - (checks the year)  Hey, you can’t do that!  Anyway, no real strong feeling here either,

14) Silent Hope - I’m not sure anything really drew me in on this one.  The concept of no one being able to talk, I at first wondered what that would do for storytelling, like, how they’d work with that concept.  I figured it could be interesting, but also would run the risk of if everything’s just pantomimed, it could get tiring.  But then we just get an NPC that talks for everyone anyway, so... (shrug).

15) Fae Farm - Oy, I already got the “cozy farming sim” checkmark.  No strong feelings here.

16) Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 Turbocharged - I never played that previous Hot Wheels game that came up, but it looked like it could be interesting.  Was the original any good?

17) Manic Mechanics - Basically Undercooked but with car fixing?  I’ve played Undercooked solo which, uh....  Oof.  It’s a lot to keep track of, haha.  Definitely something that would be more fun with other players.

18) Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope DLC - I still need to finish the first game, but it is enjoyable.  So happy for this, and already have the pass so got it downloaded.

19) Dragon Quest Monsters : The Dark Prince - Heck yeah new DQM, I did enjoy those games, so might want this.

20) Pikmin 4 - (hype intensifies)  Super looking forward to this.  I’m happy to see Pikmin 2 style dungeons return, I enjoyed those.  Wonder if we have a time limit this time or not, I can enjoy with or without, but I do wonder if this might be more PIkmin 2 style “take your time,” which I can appreciate.

21) Pikmin 1 + 2 - Heck yeah, all four Pikmin games on one system?  Well, no Hey Pikmin, but the mainline ones, which heck yeah.  I’ll probably wait for the physical version though.

22) Metal Gear Solid : Master Collection Vol. 1 - I’ve never been too into the Metal Gear series, buuuuuut I might be thinking of getting it as a holiday gift for my uncle.

23) Vampire Survivors - Already got it on Steam.  And still haven’t figured out how to survive a full minute past Death’s appearance which is like, a requirement on every stage.

24) Headbangers Rhythm Royale - My only real thought here is Team 17 made a pigeon game, so they will explode violently and not where you told them to.

25) Penny’s Big Breakaway - This looks super fun, I hope it turns out good.

26) Mario Kart 8 DLC - I’m kind of surprised Kamek got in as the Tour rep over Pauline.

27) Star Ocean The Second Story R - I have no real nostalgia for this one, never played the original, don’t know much about the series.

28) WarioWare : Move It! - My only concern is how responsive will the motion controls be.  I usually find motion controls frustrating.

29) Nintendo Live - No way I’d be able to attend, so no real thoughts.

30) Tears of the Kingdom amiibos - These look cool, definitely want them.

31) Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Honestly, yes please.  This looks super fun.

So yeah, all in all, very strong Direct.

[chaotically-genderfluid]

Hi hello it’s about time I made one of these!!

So, uhh—

HELLO INTERNET WELCOME TO GAME THEROY MY TUMBLR. We’ve got all sorts of random stuff here— mainly Rain World and what-not.

I also have a YouTube channel— I’ll link it here

So, random stuff now GO!!

What To Refer To Me As: Sam is what I prefer, it’s short and uhh it’s easy to remember. Plazminx or Plaz is also an option, as Plaz is my fursonas name

Pronouns: I mainly use He/Him, sometimes fluctuating because ✨genderfluid✨

I am a MINOR, not saying how old cause THATS MY INFO SORRY—but no weird stuff okay? Okay. Got it!

Also: please send me asks or art requests, I’m happy to answer (mostly) anything

Intrests: HERE WE FRICKIN GO— (in no specific order)

Ori (I like Blind Forest more sue me)

Wings Of Fire (No comment—go read it before I find your location)

Five Nights at Freddy’s (Came in late but IM HERE NOW)

Undertale/Deltarune (Less than a while ago, but still)

Warrior Cats (Battle Cats: Religion Edition)

Hollow Knight (I like Ori better but still—)

Rain World (little creatures doing creature things)

Pokèmon (GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL—!)

Pikmin (You make an army and then watch them die, what’s not to love?)

Your Turn To Die (Haha frick you *kills your favorites casually*)

Just Shapes And Beats (This still counts if I haven’t played it in ages right? Right?)

Amulet (I was late okay?)

Lumberjanes (ripleyripleyripleyripleyripl—)

Epithet Erased (i dunno what to put here uhh prison of plastic)

Lego Monkie Kid (only lego show i’ve seen the entirety of, please ask me about everyone in this show)

Yokai Watch (guys you don’t understand this THING—)

THIS WILL BE EDITED WHEN I REMEMBER EVERYTHING!!!

userboxes under cut

from this post

Okay bye now

[game-boy-pocket]

okay. I don't have much to say about the Nintendo Direct. There was once again not very much for me,

I dunno man, like it's not like i'm trying to say these games are bad, I know they have their fans, but I'm not going to lie, it's already an uphill battle for me when it's not an IP I'm already familiar with but then almost all of them are genres I don't really care about or they appear to be more concerned with being artistic or telling a story than actually being fun to play...

I already have Metroid Prime and Kirby's Return to Dreamland so I wasn't exactly itching for remasters of those that are likely to be 60 bucks. I'm starting to empathize more and more with people who bemoan remakes when I used to be dismissive of them. Cuz like, now a lot of stuff that doesn't need remakes and could be perfectly fine with simple port jobs are getting remakes...Like I would at least be interested in checking out Metroid Prime if it was a port of the trilogy, but I'm probably gonna pass on the remake of Prime 1. Cool for the newcomers who don't have a gamecube or Wii though.

Pikmin looks cool but i'm a very casual fan of Pikmin. I played a lot of the first game, didn't get a chance to play the 2nd, and only played the third game one time and thought it was just "okay", so I don't know if I want to pick this one up immediately.

I think adding GBA to NSO might finally make that expansion pass worth the price of admission, but I'm still not re-subscribing to even the regular NSO, I just don't like the subscription model, and I can play all these games with no input lag on a CRT anyway, so, cool for people that want this.

Genuinely pleased by the Yoshi's Island and Birdo announcement in Mario Kart but ehhhh, why didn't they show off the other tracks in that wave?

Tears of the Kingdom is still looking like Tears of the Kingdom. If that was Ganon's voice then I'm a little underwhelmed. Ganondorf has always left a big impression on me, so I had the highest expectations for his voice, and it just kind of sounds like they got bootleg Kevin Micheal Richardson to voice him.

Well, thank goodness that I care more about old games than new ones these days, otherwise I would be disappointed. But instead i'm gonna happily play something from my ginormous backlog.

[sinnabee]

WOOOO okay so i streamed for. 10 hours yesterday??? who’s ready to do it again. (:

out getting *wab right now, but once i get home i might play a LITTLE BIT of pikmin and then start up another stream for more art fight attacks!

plans for the stream:

- revenge on 2 peeps that got me DURING STREAM

- continue work on my next piece (EHEHEHEHE)

- if i finish that piece as well, do some more thumbnails to figure out a few more attacks, then start on the next big one

yayayaya! alright just got me food, off i go. look for update in a few hours!

*wab = whataburger, the funniest way to abbreviate it. pronounced like “bob” but if waluigi had his way and slapped a “WAAAH” at the front

[sonatanote]

February 2023 Nintendo Direct Bullet Thoughts

Pikmin 4 being a rescue mission feels like a natural progression, same with the assumed night-time exploration. Probably going to add some good tension, though not as much as the unsettling dog friend.

Someday I'll play Xenoblade Chronicles 3... when I have time hahaaaaaaaaa.

Samba De Amigo is the strangest comeback, but I'll take it?

I haven't wanted to be an Influencer™ even virtually and I'm not going to start now.

Is it just me or is the new Tron game kinda pulling from the Necrobarista school of mostly static narrative panels in 3D spaces w/ really precise and gorgeous cinematography?

GHOST TRICK REMASTERED BB!!!!!! :3

...followed by a game in which we play a cop... 'kay. I mean cat form cool, but ehhhh

Bayonetta: Origins has a gorgeous storybook aesthetic, but also feels real strange? Not even sure what pricks my mind on this, but it's probably going to be fine.

If Splat33n crosses over with Nier, I will laugh hard enough to blow up the sun.

So strange to see an "X of Illusion" game from Disney in the year of our gods 2023, but the animation is satisfyingly good, so I can't really complain.

Harmony, is yet another game with gorgeous animation, but also might have an interesting enough story to keep me hooked.

Stars, I'm never going to play a JRPG again with my schedule, huh?

NA NA, NA NA NA NA NA NA NA KATAMARI ON THE SWING 🎶

Been waiting for Sabotage's next game after The Messenger to come out, and MAN IT'S LOOKING GOOD.

Seeing Etrian Odyssey get an easy mode for it's older games is FUNNY, but I'm surprised they don't seem to have remastered / remixed the soundtracks.

Advance Wars finally exists, for real this time.

I've always wanted to play as Magolor, and now my wishes have been fulfilled. Now we can finally learn how he came to become a Theme Park Manager.

GBA / GB games are nice, and the local / online multiplayer is nice. Cool. Cool cool.

Metroid Prime Remastered feels like they're building up hype to try and get a reveal of Metroid Prime 4 later down the line. Still, looks gorgeous.

Ah, hello Not!Danganronpa.

Oh, it's that Animal Crossing Fantasy game that was decidedly okay

Huh, new Professor Layton game... WAIT WHAT‽‽‽‽

Banger soundtrack tbh for the rapid-fire blitz of games. Highlights for me were Blanc, Battle Network Collection, and Have a Nice Death

6th time seeing Breath of the Wild 2 as the stinger really kinda dampens the effect. But hey, we have slightly better voice acting and a tentative release date!

[megabuild]

got tagged by wasp @waspcup for a get to know me better thing hi wasp thanks wasp

last song go go ghost ship by kenshi yonezu which i actually haven't listened to in years but randomly remembered. kinda wanna make a pmv

currently watching i'm not kidding when i say i almost never watch things because i have a criminally low attention span. but i watched an episode of the bear it was okay. i tried watching house md like 4 months ago and never finished it but i'll get back to it sometime. riverdale season 7 as a regretful riverdalehead. this is the extent of things i have watched this year ,

currently reading mairimishita iruma-kun which is very sweet would recommend. fun home by alison bechdel which i'm not far into. confessions of a mask by yukio mishima i have not started yet but it's next on my list. and a big book about beekeeping i posted about a while back but forget the name of now

current obsession um i've been playing a lot of pikmin recently and also dark souls remastered... trying to do a soul level one run and it's making me want to chew glass but it's alright

im not gonna tag anyone cuz im shy but if anyone wants to do this and say i tagged them go for it mwah mwah smooches

[always-thirsty-pocket]

What other Nintendo franchises did you lose interest in?

Not often people actually want to hear this stuff, I just want to remind anyone reading this that somebody asked for my opinion, so keep that in mind before you say i'm being whiny, I keep this shit to myself for the most part unless someone asks... anyway...

Pokemon is one but I don't need to beat that dead horse again. I think Splatoon probably held the record for going stale, Splatoon 2 felt pretty much like the exact same game as splatoon 1 but with a few things from splatoon 1 missing. And Splatoon 3 looks like more of the same again. When people post videos of Splatoon 3 I can't tell anything that's different about it from Splatoon 2. Feels like a game that should have waited a generation and Splatoon 2 could have just got a hefty expansion, or maybe instead of a new mainline game, Splatoon coulda made it's first spinoff.

Animal Crossing is kinda getting there too but being able to decorate outside went a really long way with New Horizons. I think some of the more important updates took too long to get here though, I got tired of playing when they introduced the ability to decorate our residents homes, which was one of my most wanted features since my fave villager Paula still has her same shitty starter home from day 1. New Horizons really turned it around but I REALLY want the next Animal Crossing to be different.

Yoshi is another one. Too easy. Too much Yoshi Story influence in both the art style and the music. It gradually got more papercrafty. I just don't care for the direction they've taken Yoshi as a character after the SNES era. He feels like he should be on Sesame Street now.

Kirby... ehhh... I can't say I've lost interest, because I really want to play Forgotten Land. I just think there are only so many times I can be wowed by "cute pink puff sees Dedede doing bad things but surprise surprise, Dedede was innocent and an ancient dark god was behind it all", like this is exactly the thing people were getting tired of with Sonic, why is it okay when Kirby does it? I don't want dedede to be a villain again, I'm just tired of the stakes being that high all the time, give me a break once in a while, give me more Superstar level stuff... also I don't think the gameplay gimmicks they've been adding add anything of value, they mostly slow the pace at best and are clunky and make the game less fun at worst. Also none of the spinoffs have ever looked fun to me.

I don't think there's anything else i'm losing interest in, there may be stuff i'm more indifferent to these days but my investment in them was never strong to begin with, like I guess Pikmin, I like the first game, never got a chance to play the 2nd game, and thought the third one was just okay.

[channel-eclair]

I have to be honest NSO's game structure has kinda grown on me. I hated it at first, but honestly I hardly used virtual console bcuz I wanted to save money for big new games (the only VC game I have is actually EarthBound on the 2DS), and when it comes to emulating I'm a bit uncomfy there but it has to be something I geniunely care and am motivated enough to want to play

So NSO works oddly well for me, cause I'll be minding my own business and then randomly at 10 PM Nintendo will knock on my window and go "pssst hey, you wanna play mario tennis for the gameboy color right now" and I'll just shrug and go "??? sure? why not i guess?"

And then 20 minutes later I'm like "wow mario tennis for the gbc is actually super awesome, i literally never wouldve played this game in my life if not for these specific circumstances"

That said though PLEASE NEVER ADD GAMECUBE TO NSO PLEASEEE LET THEM BE THEIR OWN RELEASES LIKE PIKMIN 1/2 PLEASE JUST PUT THEM ON SWITCH NATURALLY ITS SO HARD TO GET PROPER PHYSICAL GAMECUBE GAMES I JUST WANNA OWN THEM PLEASEEE DONT PUT THAT ON NSO

DS games I'm okay with being on NSO if they can find a way to make it work but pleaseeee just release GameCube games the same way Pikmin 1 + 2 were on Switch

I still am iffy about the subscription style, but it is honestly SO much cheaper than other game companies that I think it's a bit silly to target Nintendo with hate when Sony is right there

[woodswolf]

Oh!!!! 9, 29, & 38 please!

fic writer ask game

9. Tell us your favorite thing to drink when you write

I'm gonna be real with you anon, I drink diet Mountain Dew like it's water. Something something self medicating for ADHD (NOT THAT IT FUCKING WORKS)

29. Which fic would you most like to have fan art done for?

TITLE DROP TIME: catch/cradle. This is the first entry in one of the "sequel" lines from DLD, but I might end up putting it in both series on AO3 because (1) they're all the same chronology, just with different contexts (let you think over that one for a little while with the riddle), and (2) some of its contents are specifically relevant to the main series between callbacks to DLD and calls forward to... WELL. We'll just leave it at that :)

I had intended to do this title drop in the upcoming spoiler post, but I still have to respond to comments and write chapter 5 and FUCK man I have had no fucking time for anything these past few weeks. Anyway.

There's a lot of really fun stuff that could have fanart in this one. A lot of Images. If the true form of the Pikmin's side of DLD is a wordless graphic novel and the true form of Olimar's side of DLD is a stream-of-consciousness As It Is, the true form of several specific scenes of catch/cradle would be a film, because there are a lot of framing tricks you can pull off in film that don't really work the same way in text mediums.

(Mostly that you can show-don't-tell without specifically "showing" and thereby "telling". There is one specific location where if I could avoid describing it in detail and leaving noticing specific elements as a purely visual thing — or, to put it another way, to leave the POV character on the level of context they would be on and allowing the audience to pick up the very specific references to previous events and how another character has chosen to contextualize them — would be better than having to say "okay so this thing is in the doorway and this thing is on the wall in a central position and this thing is over here and etc. etc." because there is SO much little reasoning behind some of these things and I would want viewers to react to it organically rather than for it to have ANY attention called to it.)

The dev title for this line of sequels would be the brave and sacred earth for a lot of reasons. As I broke it down to my partner in DMs:

"Sacred earth" as in a play on "sacred turf", because I don't intend to touch the primary topic of this sequel line in ANY fashion ANYWHERE else EVER again - it's too wholly holy to be messed with so trivially. There can be any number of stories set in this chronology, and I do in fact have some very low priority ideas that I would probably only get to years down the line if ever, but the way I see it, there's simply no point for me to ever touch this "kind" version of the base concept without treating the events of DLD chapter 4 as part of its canon. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine why — but if you can't quite figure it out now, the tags that I'll be adding to chapter 5 will make it obvious. Probably. Technically this is a me thing because I have BEEF with another story for not handling a similar subject exactly how I would have.

"Brave" as in:

38. Pick three of your fics and share a song to go with each

I have a 3 hour long playlist of DLD series songs. So!

catch/cradle: The Weight of Us by Sanders Bohlke.

The time has come, let us be brave The time has come, let us be brave Shake off all of your shame The time has come, let us be brave The time has come, let us be brave Let us be brave Let us be brave

This just really sums up the emotional arc in a way? Sometimes things are a change for the better, but recognizing that they are better introduces impossible amounts of guilt that these things that are better are not what was before. I could elaborate further, but really that's what it comes down to.

Other contenders: The Trap by Tally Hall, On A Good Day (cover) by Spencer Pugh, Our Love Remains by rei brown

[TITLE REDACTED] (codename: DLDP3): Body to Flame by Lucy Dacus.

Believe me, I'm speaking plainly and painfully Trying to stay elegant, eloquent and delicate to you I see you holding your breath with your arms outstretched Waiting for someone to come rip open your chest

Lamellamar song of ALL TIME. There's an entire scene (not written, just an outline) that I posted in a more artsy Discord server like eight months ago that unfortunately got ignored. But! Holy shit this one is so real you have no idea.

Other contenders: The Calling by The Amazing Devil, Two Ravens by Hawthorn

dogs leading dogs: By My Side by Uzo Aduba and the Godspell ensemble cast.

It's a really hard choice, because I can't even say that there is a single song that encapsulates all of base DLD for me, but By My Side comes really, really close. I can't even pull out specific lyrics because it's just. All of it. Our two dogs are each all three of the follower and the pebble and the betrayed, and it keeps the same tender-yet-tragic tone of everything except chapter 6 (which is kind of its own thing, you'll see when we get there).

Other contenders are mostly songs that are INSANE fits for specific scenes without being Encapsulating, so here we go:

I'm Your Man by Mitski is a second overall pick for "THE DLD song". It's not quite the right tone, or at least not anymore, but it came out right when I was starting the initial drafts of this project so I can't not mention it.

Gravedigger (Acoustic version) by Dave Matthews. This one was actually intentionally referenced in-text but we haven't seen that yet (it's in chapter 5).

New Normal by Jack Stauber is a good summation of where we're going to be left off on one of our timelines.

Wanderer's Lullaby by Adriana Figueroa is one that I've regularly come back to for some of the more emotionally difficult scenes. The last ~300ish words of vi. love (as an absence) were written to it, as were a few portions of the Pikmin parts of chapter 5.

The Woods by San Fermin is more of a general chapter 1 song, but as a result it carries relevance with the entire rest of the fic.

How Did I Die? by Einstürzende Neubauten is also a more general song but it doesn't match as well as I'd like in some ways. It does, however, mirror the structure very nicely — there's a clear change between the "body" and "epilogue" of the song.

Thanks for the ask! :D