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Don't you wish we could swap clothes with npcs in Infinity Nikki?

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INFINITY NIKKI TAROT DECK ✨️

Part 2:

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dorky music student post but i love that infinity nikki gave us multiple gorgeous musician outfits AND labeled the notes in solfège. i loved practicing aural skills with some of the earlier musician quests even if i was playing the game to forget the trials of music school. i love that the pipe has a vibrato button, the different animations for each instrument are cute, and obviously the fucking stunning music during gameplay and how it varies by location but feels cohesive for heartcraft.

i hope we can stream the score soon. three cheers for music details in infinity nikki.

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Outfit: Verdant Melodies

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Actually while I'm just vibing on here today I want everyone to look at the Ominous Cube that appeared to me in Infinity Nikki

It appeared at like 2 am last night by casting a huge shadow over me it was a delightful experience

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Endlessly funny to me the Infinity Nikki plot is so insane Giovanni pulled out this card and we all went "okay this might as well happen"

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let nikki double major in biology and fashion, i think she'd have fun

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˚˖𓍢ִ໋🌸✧🩷˚.𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒

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Infinity Nikki stands apart from other c*zy games cause yes you are grooming cute animals and making pretty princess dresses, but also creativity is the magic that holds the world together, a chained Goddess puts a heart into your chest that lets you magically create miracle outfits, but it also drives the world to ruin if you don't suppress its power through creating original outfits.

God died. His successors blame eachother for it. Borders are closed because of constant military conflict. People are falling into comas left and right and the person most equipped to investigate this is a pink girliepop and her brother who is a small cat.

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love this style!!

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i was still riding on the pokémon high when i took this snapshot. the idea was that they were trainers who had finally found a pokémon center to rest at after a long week on the road. with that in mind, the concept is definitely childhood friend/neighbours coded. i didn't intend for any references with the caption but in hindsight, oooo, missed opportunity. as a general rule i style my nikki to a complementary colour scheme before taking these shots.

i framed red as the more 'dynamic' person in this duo, hence the more active pose. she's just oodles of enthusiasm for the journey (and a very, very light sleeper, so you can guess how happy she is with their new accommodations). instead of an 'opposites attract' trope, i think that would only be happening here on a very surface level. the main obstacle to their romance is that they know each other too well, and interact like it's instinct. the shift from friendship to something else is completely uncharted territory and that throws them off as they travel. it would be less of a "they haven't confessed and the slowburn is driving everyone crazy" and more of a "we already act like we've been dating for years and now we're adjusting to married life"

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spot the difference

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i don't know if each outfit has a separate team working on it, but we can conclude whoever did fairytale swan and its evolutions was imbibing themselves with the essence of probably something hard to get without a prescription because its details blows everything in the standard banner out of the water. though whispers of waves' hair has PHENOMENAL rigging and i'm just an eensy bit upset i still don't have it. this isn't to say that the other standard fits aren't good (i'm in love w/ all of them infold give me more crystals) but i do hope infold goes back at some point and give them the same amount of fine detail and attention swan got.

pov: you ditch your flaky prom date for a woman who actually cares to coordinate your fits. the tension, the last minute change, the bated breath because she left you on read... then she rolls up in front of the designated meeting place on time.

they're dating by the end of the night.

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Infinity nikki when it forgets you can change your skin tone

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this yellow magician outfit became one of my favourites out of nowhere and it helps with photo concepts. this was taken when the fireworks fiesta was still ongoing.

the main event takes a passing fancy to one of the audience members trope but make it sapphic. i'm 50-50 on the "the person chosen doesn't know who they are" and "the person chosen is actually a huge fan" - i think both character tropes have a place in this type of story and depends a lot more on where it should lead. it's under the same category as "idol x fan" or "idol x some person who is completely unaware of recent pop culture." i know plenty of people consider those tropes an immediate ick but i keep hoping a story of that genre will pull the rug under out from me with a less common twist

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i like how you brought up grief

we've definitely got enough foundation in here to say that the pieceys and the faewish sprites are at their core a metaphor for how people grieve loss and move on (or not, in the faewish sprites' case).

the pieceys try their best to celebrate what was left behind, and a lot of their quests revolve around figuring out and fulfilling the last wish of the person who is no longer there. their quests are super somber but sincere, accepting, like this isn't their first loss and it still hurts all the same anyway.

the faewish sprites "carry on" in the sense of daily life because they HAVE to, but psychologically and i guess you could say spiritually, since the wishing one is their god, they're deeply tormented by it and incapable of processing it properly and it leads to what happened in the main questline. i genuinely believe the coming of age ceremony quest we get is indicative of them breaking the cycle of grief (besides the generational trauma) after nikki's intervention, because the new adult sprites will be under giroda's surveillance, and giroda will do everything in his power to make sure none of these sprites will ever be in the situation that he was in. they will learn about pain and sorrow and letting go and not doing so will have disastrous consequences for everyone not just the sprites.

More thoughts on Infinity Nikki's themes that I'm still rotating in my head, but like.

In contrast to the Faewish Sprites who evoke children despite also living for hundreds of years, the Pieceys as a whole are old. There's this sense of...decay around them, coupled with the way the Abandoned District is designed as the literal ruins of human civilization. Pieceys cannot naturally heal, their fabric only grows more worn over time. They patch themselves with fabric, but do that too much and there's not enough of themselves and they die.

The Abandoned District itself is a sharp contrast to the Wishing Woods, and IMO it's a pretty carefully crafted difference. The Abandoned District's aesthetics and music carry this undercurrent of melancholy that permeates nearly every part of the experience in exploring it versus the way the Wishing Woods is whimsical.

The story of the Faewish Sprites revolves around the Coming of Age Ceremony—it's been delayed and it needs to happen. The Faewish Sprites are about the future. Meanwhile the Pieceys have multiple stories exploring death or remembering the past. I think it's not a coincidence their downtrodden are specifically those who cannot remember where they came from?

But there's another difference I think. The Faewish Sprites are a very collective kind of society. They all dress exactly the same with only minor variations—there are no Faewish Sprites with their hoods down, for example, but many wear makeup or accessories which provide only really inconsequential differentiations. Even their names follow a strict naming convention (-bo/-da).

Meanwhile the Pieceys are much more varied in appearances. If you look closely there are model recycles, but IMO that's more of a limitation of the medium than the way it's handled with Faewish Sprites. The Market of Mirth and the Handsome Lads Circus also stand out to me as celebrations of individuality and life, much more than any place in the Wishing Woods. Pieceys also have theatre and arts and tell each other stories, connecting them closely to the humans they succeeded.

The contrast brings with it a difference in mentality too. There's a letter to Giroda post-story from an anonymous Faewish Sprite (probably Morimada IMO) that states that they never really hated him but Faewish Sprites had no reason to question Chigda as their authority, so they followed him in mistreating Giroda. It's arguable how sincere this letter was (I assume it is because of the way Faewish Sprites are in general), but compare that sentiment with how every Piecey we met all treated Raggy in different ways.

maybe it also goes back to the Wishing One. He created the Faewish Sprites in life, so they're perpetually his children. Because of this, we get the Ascetics who punish themselves and the Faewish villains who cannot accept this death. The Pieceys were created when he died and became the Silvergale, so they carry a perpetual grief within their bodies. So they try to celebrate life where they can.

I don't really know where I'm going with this! Despite focusing on Faewish Sprites more, I love both and I think they're both very well written and tie well together within the lore.