dogs-leading-dogs

[dogs-leading-dogs]

here's the fuck-huge playlist. you can probably figure out just from looking at this list exactly which part of this entire series i care about the most (catch/cradle) and exactly why it makes me so insane (olimar [REDACTED], which sure is something he is uniquely capable of in these circumstances).

hi! I binged through all of dld back in november and have been thinking about it ever since!

Was wondering if you had a specific playlist or some songs you think about while writing or the like.

Been listening to “I’m Your Man” non stop and would like more to scratch The Itch.

oh trust me. I've Got You Covered. i have had an itunes playlist since like maybe a month after i started the project (if even that long after, it was very early on) and as such i have a lot to share! but there are caveats, so it's easier to present this in a list of categories! sorry that this took a long time to put together lol i had a lot to say and a lot of songs to find

all of these are provided without comment except where i felt like it. songs that have an asterisk * have extremely vivid AMVs in my head.

several of these songs were mentioned on an old ask response here. i've copied some of those comments over.

Songs That Are DLD:

In General:

By My Side (Godspell New Broadway Cast version) by Uzo Aduba and the ensemble

Filed under: songs that make me go WAAAAAAAAAAAH. olmar. pik man. they are The Sad. they are The Only Thing Left . this makes Me also The Sad . But yeah, this one was an easy pick at the time for the Most Base-DLD song. All of our main characters (i.e. characters who were present during chapter 1) can fit any and all of the roles in the song. And the tragic tone is just. Perfect. Encapsulates everything nicely.

Call Them Brothers (both versions) by Regina Spektor and Only Son

Lots of things these ones can be talking about, lots of things that are correct interpretations.

How Did I Die? by Einstürzende Neubauten

This one is interesting but for reasons I can't explain yet. It's very base-DLD in general but in a rare case including chapter 6. It allows you to hear where chapter 6's "and now for something completely different" moment begins.

Horizon by Finley

There aren't any official lyrics anywhere and I strongly disagree with what's spelled out on Genius. Most of the lyrics are very applicable, but my interpretation of the pre-chorus is why it's on here: Now something's broken but time Will fix everything Chase the light

* I'm Your Man by Mitski

As before said this song was nearly foundational to the initial conceptions of DLD's Vibe back when I first started writing it. It's not quite the right tone anymore, but it's still very applicable, though now its applicability is very localized to chapters 1-5 of DLD itself (hence why it's not in the next section). I picked this before as the second-strongest base-DLD song only behind By My Side and for very good reason.

And the Hound by Yaelokre

This one is both a coherent and incoherent link. It definitely belongs here despite the fact that the lyrics barely apply. The Hound is a very important character is all I can say.

Willow Tree March by The Paper Kites

Man's Road by America

Pikmin Side:

The Woods by San Fermin

Previously called out as an especially strong base-DLD song, but very specifically a chapter 1 song.

You'll Not Feel The Drowning by horizon

The Shell by Lucy Dacus

You don't wanna be a creator Doesn't mean you've got nothing to say Put down the pen, don't let it force your hand You don't wanna be a leader Doesn't mean you don't know the way Hold your own hand, walk on without a plan

New Normal by Jack Stauber

Previously called out as an excellent summary of where the Pikmin side leaves off in DLD... at least until we get to the brave and sacred earth.

Wanderer's Lullaby by Adriana Figueroa

I think I mentioned in chapter 4's author's notes that I was listening to this for 6+ hours on repeat while writing the very end of vi. love (as an absence). If I didn't, it was only because of AO3's character limit restrictions, because this song was entirely too perfect for that section for a lot of reasons. What else but a lullaby to sing someone to sleep? According to that post I linked before I also used it during some parts of the Pikmin's side of chapter 5, but I don't remember that too specifically. It has been basically a year and a half since I wrote those sections though. [ROBLOX OOF].

Gravedigger (Acoustic) by Dave Matthews

I've previously said that this song was going to be alluded to in-text, but now that we're past where it appears, I can officially say that this song is why it's specifically mentioned to be raining in the last scene of viii. wait (and hope) in Chapter 5. :)

The Long Song (from Doctor Who) by Murray Gold

Pikmin side chapter 2. Next question.

Next of Kin by Lucy Dacus

More or less where Olimar ends up emotionally after he knows that he is safe enough to grieve.

Olimar Side:

Turn Back by Ryan Roth

xv. rein in your emotions, the song. Just generally the Ship to Olimar from the start of chapter 5 up until the end of the Olimar side.

THE PRESSURE by little image

This one's pretty vague and could go here or in the mainline sequels. It's going here to pad out how pathetic this section is otherwise. (Unfortunately, a lot of the songs that could stand to be mentioned here are better fits in the next section, because Olimar's side fundamentally exists as a vehicle to deliver Riddle foreshadowing. Everything else is merely a bonus.)

Songs That Are More Related To DLD Chapter 6 And Beyond:

Mainline Sequels:

?????????? by Fewjar

Straight-up spoilers. It's all spelled out in the chorus honestly. This song has always read as the critical trope to me (it's on another huge fic playlist I have for exactly the same reason it's on DLD's playlist).

* ????????????? by The Dear Hunter

STRAIGHT-UP SPOILERS. But so so so so so thematic for DLD itself. This song is the incarnation of DLD1. The love here is so, so, so key.

* ??????? by AJR

Very very specifically DLD3's theme song, but also just a general commentary on the logistics of the Riddle itself. I have shared this song with exactly one person and they understood the intent but I neither confirmed nor denied their thought. They were correct, though.

???????????????? by ????? ?????

Really weird case, but this specific combo remix stood out to me and has surpassed either version of the original. This is UNDENIABLY a duet between Olimar and [REDACTED] and I'm tired of pretending it's not. But! We'll have to get to DLD4 before this one makes sense. (No title or author because this one is much easier to identify than the others, the original is apparently a Gen/sh/in Imp/a/ct fansong and the channel that uploaded this two-cover remix has literally no other videos like it to add ambiguity.)

?????????????????? by The Dear Hunter

Interrelated with the previously mentioned TDH song and thus it's on here too. This one isn't as viscerally Correct, but it still is very applicable to the nature of the Riddle.

??????? by The Eden Project

Very much where Olimar is at emotionally through a lot of the later entries in the mainline series.

The Calling by The Amazing Devil

Previously called out as being a DLD3 song, but I have to admit I have no idea why anymore. This is one of the songs I've recently been debating on removing from the list.

Always Sayin' by The Littlest Man Band

DLD2's theme song. Just DLD2 in general. DLD2 DLD2 DLD2. Has been ever since I heard it. The ultimate pick.

Better Man by The Littlest Man Band

Not Entirely Alone by The Narcissist Cookbook

Two Ravens by Hawthorn

Previously called out as a DLD3 song and it still is! Hooray. The song link goes to Bandcamp because my favorite version of it (the original) isn't on YouTube.

Disembodied Mind by Sparkbird & Stephan Nance

Clocks by Coldplay

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 This is the song that I ultimately declared to be the most DLD3 song, and it sure is something. Very very very very very Lamellamar. There's a specific scene I have in mind for DLD3 that has been planned since maybe a month after I started writing that is entirely based around this song. It's so much.

The Brave and Sacred Earth:

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 Previously called out as a catch/cradle song. As I said then: This song just really sums up the brave and sacred earth's and specifically catch/cradle's emotional arc. 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. This song is where the "brave" part of the brave and sacred earth's series title comes from, but you can read more about that in the same post linked at the top.

On A Good Day (cover) by Spencer Pugh

So, 'cross the years and miles and through On a good day you can feel my love for you Will you please leave me be so that I can stay true To the path that you have chosen? Previously called out as an especially strong catch/cradle song. This cover over the original by Joanna Newsom for multiple reasons, but most notably the bleaker tone compared to the original and some minor lyrics changes.

Our Love Remains by rei brown

No matter how much we change Our love Our love remains Previously called out as an especially strong catch/cradle song.

Can't Help Falling In Love (studio cover) by twenty one pilots

Belongs here, but also belongs in the Just Vibes section. I have the studio version on my playlist, but my favorite version is the music video with live recordings.

Dream by Priscilla Ahn

Little Boat by Daniel Rogers

This song is one of a few that unfortunately don't exist anywhere on the internet except via buying them through iTunes or maybe Amazon Music, as the Hoodwinked sountrack isn't even playable on Spotify. The 432hz version I linked is detuned just enough to get past YouTube's automated copyright flagging, so that's what you get. The original is very very pretty though, I bought the soundtrack (because you have to buy the WHOLE soundtrack) just for this song and like 3 others back in the day.

To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra

Yours & Mine by Lucy Dacus

For those of you who told me I should stay indoors Take care of you and yours, take care of you and yours But me and mine (Me and mine) Me and mine (Me and mine) We've got a long way to go before we get home 'Cause this ain't my home anymore This ain't my home anymore This ain't my home One of those songs that's kinda AU but I stick it on the playlist anyway because it stirs such a strong image.

The Trap by Tally Hall

Midnight air is unprepared for Thoughts we would condemn Silence of the stars above In any other weather We would try to stay together but it's Them and you and me Stringing electricity And the rest of it is waiting under When it overflows Taking us where no one knows We remember when we fell into the trap Previously called out as an especially strong catch/cradle song. The whole song is relevant to the brave and sacred earth, but it's this set of verse and chorus that makes it catch/cradle specifically.

Never Meant to Know by Tally Hall

Featherstone by The Paper Kites

* Dog Days are Over by Florence + the Machine

Leave all your love and your longing behind You can't carry it with you if you want to survive This song already just works to describe basically the entire point of the brave and sacred earth. But then it just had to go and throw in the allusion to the dog metaphor, and use the dog metaphor correctly in context, so, y'know. It belongs here.

Songs That Are Just Vibes:

The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre

Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) (Acoustic version) by AURORA

I remember thinking this one was very applicable early on, but then things changed and the vibe shifted and now this one is the closest to getting removed from the playlist. I have not actually removed it yet but if I ever do remove a song from the playlist it WILL be this one.

Run To You by Pentatonix

Hope You Found It Now by Jason Walker

Child I Will Hurt You by Crystal Castles

Red Is Blue by Ben Folds

Another Hoodwinked 432hz detune.

Glow by Todd Edwards

Filed under: Songs that barely don't avoid the Just Vibes designation. Also a rare song from the Hoodwinked soundtrack that didn't have to be detuned to be on YouTube, but the quality is worse than what's on iTunes.

Run (Demo Version) by Daughter

Beyond the Invisible by Enigma

Some Sand by Ibi

Giant Blue Head by Hans Zimmer & Lorne Balfe

[dogs-leading-dogs]

im locking in

[dogs-leading-dogs]

something ive really been thinking about today is like. assuming the world doesn't effectively end before i can get around to it, i just have a sneaking suspicion, or less a suspicion than a half-realized ghost of a Feeling, that in however many years when i get around to writing the mainline sequels of DLD, 3 and 4 in particular, that they're going to feel very distinctly 2023/2024 in the way their plots are structured. that a lot of the existential anxiety more or less inherent to their premises is going to be intrinsically tied to this era of The Precipice. and that, actually, if i wanted to write them to the same visceral extent that i have been able to write certain sections of DLD thus far, that i should jump past chapter 6 and steamroll DLD2&3 as quickly as i possibly can before this moment around us finally collapses.

like, i keep up on more economic news than i should, because it is interesting and i like being informed and i want to... rehearse future feelings before i need to actually process them. Folding Ideas had a fantastic video essay on this idea back during the covid era, I Can't Stop Watching Contagion, and Innuendo Studios recently had a video that had similar energy in The South Bank of the Rubicon. the world at large is rapidly decaying into the worst version of itself, but i am still here and i want to be emotionally prepared for when the worst happens, because at the rate we're going the worst will happen. i have already accepted the term technofeudalism into my life and i can't imagine i will be replacing it any time soon.

DLD3 in particular is about olimar struggling to hold on to the last remaining shreds of stability as his entire world falls apart. there is a deep yawning pit opening up below him but as long as he can cling to the roots at the edge of the canyon he is safe. but the canyon is eroding and the handholds are falling and every Inevitability in the universe is drawing him, slowly, to accept that his only choice is to fall down into that pit. he will die down there. he knows that. but all he can do is delay the inevitable truth that he will die down there, because the truth is that he cannot climb out of the canyon on his own, and his hands are growing tired, and he is growing tired, and his body is growing heavy.

he is on The Precipice, there. The Precipice, where each "day" is wondering if this is the one where he falls. if this is the one where the other shoe drops and where everything returns, as it is meant, to oblivion.

i don't really have a point to this post. just venting more than anything. im obviously not going to jump on DLD3 first just because the moment is right for it emotionally, i want to have an audience that can engage with my work and resonate with it and it would be very of the moment, yes, but it also wouldn't make sense.

it's just. i've said previously that DLD is very much a self psychoanalysis to a certain extent. a lot of my olimar is Not me, but a lot of him very specifically is, at minimum, a dark reflection. part of my commitment to realism with DLD is the commitment to emotional realism, as i have tried to ensure that its moments can be felt because i feel them, to some extent or other.

i've also said previously that i don't know how to end his story in a way that feels organic and real. right now when i think about the ending it's too saccharine and unrealistic. it leaves a bitter taste because it isn't real even though i wish it could be.

but with the way things are going right now, i think in five, ten, fifteen years, however long it takes to get to that point, if i ever do. i think by then i'll know how to end it because i will have lived it first.

i don't know. i want to end this on a poetic note, but i don't think the oligarchs driving the world into the ground deserve a comparison that casts them as innocent.

[dogs-leading-dogs]

i like funny numbers

[dogs-leading-dogs]

these are the in-google-docs totals which include some minor extra wc such as chapter titles and in chapter 6 some notes that Obviously aren't going to be there in the final take they're just to remind me what the fuck im going to be doing there. but im so cooked man it's been four months and im still only like 1600 real words into chapter 6 😭

anyway i made a chart bc its like. gives a lot better context to understanding how Fuck Huge chapter 5 is compared to everything else. and chapter 6 is going to be similarly beefy even if it doesn't end up being as long, im only somewhere like 1/3-1/2 through the first subsection and i still have *checks doc headers* 10 other subsections to go. some of which are going to be longer or shorter but still. fuck man. imagine if i split each subsection into a separate chapter like a normal person DLD'd be on 50x as many hits by now. but alas i am too committed to the Supersections being chapters because every other way of indicating that would make DLD worse off ngl. and how to be a dog is. too much. to not delineate the alignment there.

i wanna write catch/cradle man i wanna write catch/cradle so bad catch/cradle the ultimate tragedy catch/cradle the "if you thought chapter 5 was anything i assure you you have seen NOTHING" of things being The Absolute Worst Forever And Ever. everyone involved wouldve been happier had Those Events never happened and yet. and yet. GOD. anyway this isn't about catch/cradle this is about me being a whiny baby @ chapter 6 taking forever because i suck. but god do i want to write catch/cradle. actually i change my mind this post now is about catch/cradle too simply because i want to write catch/cradle i want to write catch/cradle so bad. chapter 6 you are very important for formally establishing rather than heavily implying the entire plot hook that DLD2 and beyond are going to revolve around but i do not care about you catch/cradle is my favorite child forever and ever and can do no wrong. however as soon as i actually am writing catch/cradle i will probably change my tune because instead of just mulling over the vibes and thinking about all of the words that need to be said in two specific conversations then i will have to actually Commit to putting words in order which is the worst part of writing. do you understand. catch/cradle makes me insane and i will inflict this insanity upon all of you you will ALL SEE.

speaking of bitches locking in: me. i am Locking In. i have written almost 400 words of chapter 6 over the past 5 days . please clap

[dogs-leading-dogs]

speaking of bitches locking in: me. i am Locking In. i have written almost 400 words of chapter 6 over the past 5 days . please clap

[dogs-leading-dogs]

i forgot to post this on here. anyway DLD4 spoilers

[dogs-leading-dogs]

anyway chapter 6 starts with the actual literal definition of this pattern. bro is "OH SHIT IM FINE. WHY THE FUCK AM I FINE" and like considering the situation. yea me too buddy

reading dld and its gotta be the only thing that makes you go "OH SHIT HE'S FINE" "OH NO IT'S NOTHING"

lol anon. but yea <3 i gotta get back on the grind with DLD though man the january-february mass depressive episode is OVER ‼️

[dogs-leading-dogs]

it's going so bad man it's not going

X Y & Z!

alphabet ask meme

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

TIME LOOPS. i will eat time loops FOREVER. the ultimate source for both character Destruction and character Growth. every thing is made better with a time loop or time fuckery in general tbh.

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

warriors from several friends, tons for vns that i havent read yet but are on my list, ninjago if "it was my special interest for 8ish years until i fell off hard but im still occasionally vaguely following Series Updates whenever they cross my dash and/or unwillingly. but i think that last one is more of a divorced fandom

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

chapter 6 is going Bad. it's going bad it's not really going. i wanna write catch/cradle man

thanks for the ask!

[dogs-leading-dogs]

Liz Toohey-Wiese, 2024.

"A sign installed in the largest wildfire burn I’ve ever seen, along the BC/YK border. Borrowing the aesthetics of BC Recreation Site signs, once again pointing to the overlaps of outdoor recreation, resource extraction, and the consequences of the climate crisis. Most recreation sites in BC exist along previously built logging and mining roads.

“Forced into a great and difficult transformation” was a line I heard in a lecture on Buddhist philosophy I was listening to on my drive up north. But it became another mantra I thought about while living in a place that’s been utterly transformed by resource extraction over the past century, and as I thought about the burnt landscapes I drove through."

More here.

[dogs-leading-dogs]

waow....... Current Year..........

[dogs-leading-dogs]

going back through my post archives on my main to set up a queue to transfer old related posts over here and found an actual fucking smoking gun that just straight-up spoils the chapter 6 twist. SOOOOO funny

[dogs-leading-dogs]

there are now three (3) people aware of the Riddle Answer. a fitting number

[dogs-leading-dogs]

PapyrusPikmin1997 replied on Chapter 5: Now, this is an amazing fic, but like… how the hell is Olimar and the President dying in like sublevels 1-3 of the dream den? They aren't even that hard, and canonically the Pikmin leaders cannot die by pure damage, as in Pikmin 2 if both leaders "die" the ship just beams them up back to the surface and the day ends. (Unless however, you don't do it like this and instead make their life support damaged or something, which would be a very intelligent workaround)

Anonymous asked a question on my main blog: I know this sounds random, but for DLD, what... "game mechanics" have been changed? Because, so far it seems like the ""game"" is much harder and ruthless. I can infer that no longer does losing both captains just result in the hocotate ship beaming them up, ending the day and causing all the pikmin to die, but what else?

I received this comment reply and anonymous ask a few days ago, and considering that they're talking about very similar things, I figured I'd respond to them both at the same time. The long and short of it is that both of these questions are making a series of aggressive assumptions about how DLD "works" and kinda getting sidetracked as a result. There are also a few misconceptions that I feel are important to correct, because even if you are thinking of things in vague game mechanics terms (and you shouldn't be), they make it much easier to swallow what's going on if you properly account for them.

Fundamentally, DLD is a grounded story with a strong emphasis on how things would play out in a more or less real-world scenario while factoring known series lore; this groundedness is meant to make the emotional conflicts at the core of the story stand out all the better. For more details, let's continue below the cut, starting with correcting the assumptions.

Number one: The President hasn't been accompanying Olimar on any of his trips to attempt to find Louie. He may be physically present on PNF-404, yes, but he's more or less functioning as a middle-manager type or rubber-stamp than doing anything actually useful. This is demonstrated during the first scene of XVI and compounded via the President's noted absence during every other scene in the chapter. The long and short of it is that he's not relevant to the story that needed to be told here, as this story is very much about Olimar, the Pikmin, and their relationship; having the President be present as anything more than a nod to canon would have made things unnecessarily complicated here in a section that already had too much to say.

Next up: Olimar being alone in the Dream Den (aside from the ship's pod and the Pikmin he brought with him) also solves that "difficulty" issue more or less. I also never said that they specifically died on the first three sublevels — the Dream Den obviously has fourteen, and the only important part of the whereabouts everyone died is that the maximum sublevel they could have reached would be sublevel 13. It's important for the mainline sequels that neither Olimar nor the Pikmin encounter the Titan Dweevil here, so they must have all died before getting to that point; other than that, the exact details of their demise are up to the reader's interpretation, with the most likely scenario being a gradual decline in Pikmin numbers until Olimar fucks up in an encounter with any enemy, gets squashed by any kind of boulder or caught in a bomb rock explosion, or takes too great a blow to anywhere near his head such that his already-compromised helmet shatters and leaves him to slowly succumb to the caustic oxygen in the air.

Another thing is that considering what's "canonical" from the game's perspective is kinda the wrong question to ask in a lot of ways. HP bars or stamina wheels or any other kinds of video game abstractions like that work perfectly fine when you're playing a video game, but the second you're not they become really weird to work with and place very awkward limits on things. From a narrative perspective, working with this video game logic — where Olimar can get thrown around willy-nilly for 12-16 hours taking hard falls or getting crushed by boulders or god knows what else, end the day, and come back the next morning like nothing happened — makes things very awkward, because there aren't any consequences for fucking up. None of the Pikmin games have any kinds of systems to account for major injuries, such as Olimar's dislocated shoulder or Louie's implied concussion both from chapter 4; much less do they have any kinds of energy or stamina system to account for Olimar gradually starving in Chapter 1. Some games have systems like these — take the Fallout series as only one of many examples — but limiting what you can write to what is Explicitly Possible in a game just isn't conducive to writing a good story.

Having the day end when both leaders go down but letting the player try again tomorrow with no consequences other than losing a day is a good choice for a game, because it gives the player a chance to correct their mistakes; however, it's a bad choice for a story, because it removes all of the stakes. On the contrary, part of the reason that Pikmin doesn't have a lot of these systems for longer-term consequences and instead handwaves why some of these things aren't happening — such as PNF-404's relative lower gravity being the reason why none of the characters take fall damage — are because adding those systems would be bad for gameplay. In a game that is very fundamentally about doing things quickly and efficiently, it wouldn't just be annoying if e.g. Louie broke his leg and couldn't move and throw Pikmin at the same time due to needing crutches for a realistic length of healing time, it would be bad game design because it would be far too punishing to be fun. In writing, where the goal is to be fun by having higher stakes, the opposite would be the case.

That's a bit of an oversimplification — not every story benefits from higher stakes, even if DLD itself does — but one could easily write an academic paper about storytelling in interactive vs non-interactive mediums and how they function differently, and I don't have ten billion years to come up with definitions for all of these things to explain everything wrong with applying the rules of a certain medium universally especially when those rules are intended as abstractions. Either way, it comes down to the same thesis statement: "Applying the rules of a very dynamic and choice-based medium to an entirely predefined and non-interactive medium generally does not work well unless you're having your story be about applying those rules and all of the myriad problems or conveniences that it results in." DLD is not about applying Pikmin's video game logic to a non-interactive medium because it has far more important and deliberate things to be about, like communication, trust, personhood, fate, and perhaps most of all, dogs. Therefore, it does not benefit from having simplified video game logic that allows for infinite tries, and would in fact be made infinitely worse if everything that happened so far had no consequences beyond the end results of the immediate day. Olimar needs to die in the Dream Den because this is essential for his character arc; having him just "go down" and "get rescued" to "try again tomorrow" removes all stakes from this, because if he throws himself at the problem enough he'd eventually luck out and be able to save Louie. (Olimar is already very fond of throwing himself at problems until they get fixed; as we'll see, he doesn't need a "get out of jail free" card or a "get out of a bad situation without dying" card to continue with this behavior.)

So if we're not working off of video game logic, how does DLD generally work? More or less real life logic strongly informed by canon material. To some extent it's a vibes thing — I have definitely picked and chosen what works or doesn't depending on my own personal preference, and I've taken liberties with things that happen in the games as necessary to tell the story that I have in mind. For instance, as I've alluded to before, a lot of the rules about Onions and Pikmin work much more similarly to how they do in Pikmin 4 (with the exception of the three-type limit because it's purely a gameplay limitation put in place to not frustrate noobs). Some things, such as the exact symptoms of Olimar's leaflingism, are a blend of various ideas taking inspiration from canon, from other artists, as well as just what works better thematically. (Olimar growing a tail and "fur" certainly emphasizes the fact that he's a dog, not to mention the fact that it's that perfect combination of "cool" and "utterly horrifying", and the fact that his face remains uncovered by leaves has another thematic reading that we'll get to much, much later.)

But a lot of the minor day-to-day stuff is grounded pretty solidly in reality and an understanding of "if you were an inch tall, how would you approach this situation", which is much more effective for conveying the level of Absolute Deep Shit and general danger PNF-404 presents almost the entire time. You would not survive if a boulder three times as wide as you were tall rolled over you; Olimar and the other captains only do because Pikmin doesn't have permadeath, since that would be a very frustrating gameplay experience. You can cheat your way out of things like that hurting as much as they would for you, a Normal Human, especially when you factor in the fact that they are an inch tall, but past a point there's only so much handwaving you can do before you have to accept that half of the things that you only take "major damage" for in Pikmin would just be nearly instakills in real life. Allowing for more realistic damage creates more story, not less; you can't take damage from cornering too tightly in any of the games, but allowing it to jar Olimar's shoulder like that in Chapter 4 gives reasonable stakes that add to the situation rather than detract, as it makes it feel even more like the water wraith is a real threat.

As for other "game mechanics" that have been changed… thinking of DLD as a "game" in general is the wrong question. My philosophy with DLD so far has been to create a relatively grounded story about people and choices using Pikmin as a scaffold. (Not that DLD or any of its side material could ever be divorced from Pikmin itself — they're far too intertwined — but being faithful to game mechanics is literally the last priority that will only ever be nodded at in things such as the occasional mention of the max 100 squad size.) For everything else, I've tried to flesh the setting out using "speculative realism" where possible: by examining how things actually work in real life and applying those same principles to this setting.

For instance, while a lot of the medical science is simplified for a variety of reasons, such as ease of research and reduced scene complexity, almost all of it so far has actually had at least a little bit of research put into it. (Maybe don't orally ingest a topical eye medication, but tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride is a common active ingredient in eye drops or nasal sprays that reduces mucus membrane irritation; Omnicillin Z3 uses the naming convention of antibiotics in the penicillin family, implying that their medical science has progressed beyond ours; and demethoxycurcumin, one of the "active ingredients" in turmeric, is a yellow-orange compound that has anticancer effects among many other health benefits.) I've put a similar level of pseudorealism into the flight scenes as well; I've mentioned Olimar using various kinds of checklists multiple times (Wikipedia only has a page on preflight checklists, but here's a full list of checklists for a 747), and implied that Olimar has been acting as captain and pilot flying while the Hocotate Ship is effectively first officer and pilot monitoring via both of them effectively employing cockpit resource management principles. I even had Olimar do a walk-around on Day 30, though that was admittedly less of an intentional choice than being simply what the scene required for proper pacing. Even a lot of the specifics around how Olimar has been able to live as a leafling up to (and beyond) this point have had a lot of consideration put into them with vague real-life-adjacent explanations — it is admittedly more vibes-based than some of the rest of what I've listed out here, but most of that is because leaflingism in and of itself is a rather hefty lift away from grounded reality.

The long and short of it is: If something is actually important to be thinking about, the story will tell you that. If it's not, it won't. It should be easy enough to figure out what the actual differences are from there, but a lot of those differences simply aren't relevant on any grand scale.

In fact, the only "game mechanic" I can think of that's even vaguely relevant (and isn't essentially rolled into "baseline lore", such as the mechanics of Pikmin and Onions that I mentioned earlier) is Pikmin 1's ending requirements. DLD has simplified these requirements, in that there's no longer a strict two-tiered system with some specific parts being required while others are optional, but the general outline for part count has already been referenced in Chapter 1's title. In these relaxed requirements, you get the bad ending with 24 parts or fewer; the neutral ending with 25-29 parts; and the true ending with 30 parts. (I.E., the only change is that it's any 25 parts being required to get the neutral ending or greater rather than 25 specific parts.) Chapter 1 splits the difference as the exact dividing line between two wildly divergent outcomes of the bad or neutral endings, and thus the chapter title references 24.5, or the numeric dividing line between those endings.

Other than that, the exact game mechanics of all games in the series are for the most part entirely irrelevant. DLD is a story about people, and critically, one of the most important things that a person can do is die. Robbing Olimar and the Pikmin of their ability to end is a choice that must be made very deliberately, with great intent on the part of the story being told, and shouldn't be done merely out of faithfulness to the source material. …And that's about all I can say to avoid unnecessary spoilers.

[dogs-leading-dogs]

4500 word comment reply. and climbing. oug

[dogs-leading-dogs]

im still just kinda. reeling. idk. DLD blowing the fuck up ??

[dogs-leading-dogs]

i have been good i have been being a good i have been working on comment replies before it is 6 months later and i am dropping the next chapter in 5 minutes good job me