#also blather

[affectionatecorpse]

Redd will never stop being the absolute funniest Animal Crossing character to me. It's illegal how underrated he is. He's got either a londoner or new yorky accent depending on how you read it. His logo is a blatant ripoff of Tom Nook's. He's fuzzy. He wears nothing but an apron. He's a bastard. He's clever. He's amazing at art. He does not utilise this talent in a genuine way. He painted the Mona Lisa at least 5 times but with angry eyebrows and no other change. He went to art school. He's divorced from Tom Nook. He has a million cousins. His old colleague now works for his ex instead. He lives on a boat. He has to hide said boat from Tom. He doesn't even know if half his art is real or fake. He's a kitsune with no powers so is essentially just a normal fox. He recreated an entire stone tablet and the only thing he changed was he made it bright blue. Blathers hates him. He's an enemy of the state. He openly admitted he was crazy before realising that was a bad sales technique. He replaced the adjective with 'jolly'. In old games people were blatantly racist against him being a fox. He has the same criminal motivation as Nick Wilde. His name is just the colour of his fur. His password is a spiteful jab at his ex. He's REDD.

He's just so damn FUNNY.

[shaydh]

when i "ship" a thing really it just means "I would like to see more interactions between these two characters" regardless if the relationship is romantic, platonic, whatever. I just think it'd be interesting if you put these two together. usually there is also a coke and mentos aspect to it.

[ducksdontdraw]

Blathers and Celeste are now available as both mini prints and stickers in my Etsy shop!

[imadhatt3r]

There's a sort of small personal story arc happening in Koujaku's route that I haven't seen talked about much, and it is one relating to Aoba's struggles with his masculinity and his perception as a man by others.

This story arc heavily deals with cultural gender norms and expectations, and so I will be working with them; This doesn't reflect my personal view on gender roles and expectations in real life. This is also not for or against any headcanons regarding any character's gender- I have no opinions on them or problems with people seeing any character as trans.

Okay, without further ado:

The moment where Koujaku and Aoba canonically meet for the first time happens during their childhood. Aoba was bullied by other children for his long hair and for "looking like a girl". Koujaku stepped in to protect him, thinking that Aoba's a girl, and was allegedly suprised when Aoba turned out to be a boy, but his attitude towards Aoba never changed.

This event clearly had a big influence on Aoba, on how he views himself, Koujaku, and how he thinks Koujaku views him. When we first meet Koujaku in-game, he is seen defending himself from a woman's overly protective boyfriend and being a charmer to her in turn when she apologizes for his behavior. It's established that Koujaku has a lot of female admirers, and a bit later it's revealed that he attracts a lot of men too, but moreso as a kind of role model/aspirational figure- that's why benishigure exists in the first place.

Aoba is shown to be annoyed or downright kinda scared of Koujaku's fans; Of course, it makes sense- Aoba is shown to be a private person that dislikes attention, but I believe that there is a second layer to all that- jealousy.

Aoba identifies as a man in-game and asserts it multiple times. He is aware of his gender. Koujaku is shown to be both flirty and chivalrous towards women around him- he spends time with them, initiates physical contact, compliments them etc. Aoba is always annoyed whenever he sees Koujaku doing that, but his reasons aren't fully clear- it seems like he feels like Koujaku's behavior is, in some way, fake, or that he just dislikes PDA in general. Aoba isn't jealous of the female attention Koujaku gets- he doesn't want to be in his place, because, as we established, he doesn't like being the center of attention. This isn't a dick measuring contest with Aoba being salty that he's coming up short.

Aoba is jealous of the women. He's the one who wants Koujaku to flirt with him, touch him, be chivalrous to him, protect him, but he believes that it will never happen, because Koujaku only acts this way towards women. Men want to be him, women want to be with him, but Aoba is neither; He's not a man who wants to be him, nor is he a woman who wants to be with him- there's not a place he can comfortably occupy, in his mind.

Mind you, I don't believe that he is aware of his feelings- hence his clusterfuck of an attempt to make Koujaku's flirting with women a bad thing. It's not coherent, it doesn't really make any internal sense, because Aoba has no idea he's even trying to lead himself away from something.

In the good ending, Koujaku briefly mentions that he thinks Aoba sleeps in so much because he wants to get his attention, and I can 100% see it as being true- Aoba doesn't know how to get Koujaku to treat him like he does women around him, so he chooses more covert ways to get that desired attention and care.

I also see Aoba's haircut to be symbolic/meaningful of his relation to his masculinity being percieved by others. Aoba's hair was the reason why he and Koujaku met as kids and established their friendship and later relationship. When they were cut, Aoba started to look more conventionally "masculine", and yet the haircut is also, in a way, representative of the beginning of his and Koujaku's relationship. It's because Koujaku doesn't care that Aoba is a man- hell, in the CD drama, he even admits that he's straight up attracted to Aoba's masculinity. If Koujaku liked Aoba BECAUSE he saw him as female-like, wouldn't he want to keep his hair long/feminine?

This is kinda explored in various extra material like the summer side story and valentine's day story- Aoba seems to believe that while Koujaku is with him out of love/attraction, he's being treated more as a novelty, a "girl-boy" that's going to be replaced by an "actual woman" one day. He's afraid that the chocolates he made for Koujaku for valentine's day will be seen as "gross", and he expects to see a mountain of chocolate given to Koujaku by women when he comes to his apartment. In the summer story, he expects Koujaku to deny their relationship when they're being harassed by drunk benishigure, and that he will be left behind when Koujaku is approached by female admirers. This never happens- Koujaku actually reassures Aoba that he's never going anywhere, and that Aoba has nothing to worry about. This is framed as Aoba being simply jealous, but I think that there is enough evidence to imply that his gender has a lot to do with it. We don’t know how would he react if Koujaku was approached by a man, but it's mentioned multiple times that it's seeing and thinking of Koujaku being surrounded by women gets Aoba down especially hard.

I feel like it's also important to look into the bad ending for Koujaku's route too, because if you look at it through that lense, you can see some interesting stuff. First and foremost, Shiroba is dressed in a sexualized version of the miko garb (miko are shinto shrine maidens, and they are exclusively women) that includes stockings, and his hair is just as long, if not longer, than Aoba's. He also has red tassels in his hair, right behind his ears, which sort of look like earrings. In short, it would almost appear like Shiroba is trying to look more "feminine" in order to appeal more to the way he percieved Koujaku's tastes- after all, Shiroba/Desire is all of Aoba's impulses, thoughts, and desires taken to the extreme. Aoba thought that Koujaku likes women and femininity, so Shiroba WILL make himself look as feminine as he can to make Koujaku like him more.

There's also the fact that, compared to their good end sex scene, Shiroba is much more... Placid. In the good end, Aoba speaks, he laughs, he laughs AT Koujaku, he tries to turn his head away but agrees to look at Koujaku in the end; He is an active participant who is willing to laugh at his partner (in a way) and make demands. In contrast, Shiroba mostly goes with what Koujaku wants to do; He participates to a degree, sure, but he allows Koujaku to bite him, lick his blood, and fuck him pretty violently without any sort of resistance. This might be a stretch, but it can be seen as Shiroba trying to play a more "feminine" role- which means being passive, allowing your (male) partner to do whatever he wants to do with you (even when it's painful or uncomfortable), and let him essentially use you as a receptacle of his emotions and bodily fluids.

This is a very narrow understand of conventional gender roles, but given that Shiroba is a being of extremes, it makes sense for him to see his own gender and dynamic with Koujaku as that simple and two-dimensional. This whole ending is all about misunderstood intentions/desires, so Shiroba is doing all he can to embody the most extreme conventional femininity in an attempt to appeal to Koujaku, while not having a clue that Koujaku was actually attracted to Aoba's masculinity.

The funniest part of it all is that Koujaku is actually a pretty feminine man himself; His very design blends masculine and feminine elements, which @asarigg points it out in her excellent essay on Koujaku, (among plenty other things), and the way he acts mixes masculinity and femininity too. However, Aoba either doesn't see it, or he treats Koujaku as a "special case"; It's probably the most clear in the scene in the CD drama where Aoba says that hairpins "usually" look bad on men (after Koujaku asked him if he'd like to wear one), but that Koujaku makes it work. The whole plotline/emotional core of this route centers on Aoba relying on his simplified image of Koujaku when it comes to how he thinks about him, only to be proven dead wrong and forced to confront how multi-layered of a person Koujaku is- to reject the image he made of him in his head as a child and make a new, more nuanced one as an adult.

When Aoba was a kid, he saw Koujaku as his hero, someone who protected him, watched over him; He was kind of his masculine ideal, someone he wanted to be when he'll be older. Now that they're adults, Aoba still sees Koujaku as someone hyper-masculine, whose feminine traits and behaviors are glossed over because Koujaku is "allowed to" be feminine a bit. The sad thing is that a lot of Koujaku's masculinity is kind of a ruse that was taken on as a defense mechanic, learned back when Koujaku was living in an abusive household, when he was a victim of abuse, saw abuse inflicted onto his mother, and was possibly forced to perform violence to some degree as means of "education" (things like learning to fight hand-to-hand or swordfighting).

Koujaku can fight because he tried to fight his abusive father and was trained to kill in the future, once he takes over the criminal empire. He flirts with women to fill the void he feels due to his rock bottom self-esteem and because he doesn't want to see women sad or mistreated after what he saw his mother go through. Koujaku's persona is carefully build and maintained, because all masculinity (or gender in general) is performed- this is what people around him expected him to be, that's what he was taught to be, and so he performs, even if it twists him up inside (we know he bottles up any negative emotions and doesn't share his struggles and trauma with anyone, which is also a part of toxic masculinity). It also seems like he's often out drinking with someone and he's a smoker- that's more of a theory, but people often find brief respite from their stress/unadressed emotions in substances, and while people of all genders do it, there seems to be a bigger social acceptance for men to indulge in order to "deal" with their problems and avoid showing "weakness" for just a bit longer.

The good thing is that Koujaku seems quite comfortable in his femininity. He loves his (stereotypically feminine) job, he remains kind and gentle to those who need it, he respects women around him and treats them well (even if that relationship is far from ideal of course), he's always considerate and caring towards Aoba, etc. It's interesting that despite liking and being attracted to Aoba's masculinity, he encourages him to branch out and seemingly embrace his own femininity more (he tells him he'd look nice in a hairpin, or that he'd love him no matter how he'd look like). I wonder if Koujaku found some kind of respite in his femininity back when he lived in his father's house and was potentially held to strict masculine gender roles enforced through violence.

It feels like one of these things that Aoba needs time to process and accept; In a couple years, he'll be doing deliveries with the most complex braid with flamboyant decorations and the most bitching eyeliner ever performed on Japanese soil.

[plusultraetc]

my favorite thing about Vlad King is that his hero name is VLAD KING and his quirk is BLOOD CONTROL and he has RED EYES and SHARP TEETH and he's 6'4 and built like a BRICK WALL and his PERSONALITY IS competitive but supportive, protective and encouraging, he gets along with his students and coworkers and his favorite things are tomatoes and cheese. he's got a dog :)

[kwillow]

Hi! I discovered your blog a little while ago and read through almost the whole thing in like a day- I love Theo! In one ask you mention you could write 5,000 words about him and still have more, and I’d just like to say I for one would gladly read a Theo encyclopedia if you ever wrote one 😂

How did he get that notch in his ear?

Thank you so much! That's extremely flattering. I think my blog is effectively my Theo encyclopedia at this point, haha.

As for the notch in his ear, I obliquely referenced its origin in this earlier little comic where Theo talks about his tendency to be, shall we say, reactive:

The notch in his ear is the scar left over from a brutal fight with his old school bullies. (They fared worse.)

[goron-king-darunia]

I was asked to weigh in by @annon-guy2 on both my top pick and on the other titles, so I figured I would just recap and weigh in here for convenience. My choice in the poll was Princess Mononoke, mostly because it's my favorite Ghibli film. When asked to articulate more about what that would entail as a game, this is what I came up with (includes some edits and clarifying language I made just now):

"[A c]ombination Zelda Style adventure puzzle game and stealth game. You lose points for fatalities. Theoretically you could just go all-out and murder everything but you get the bad ending where the Forest God permanently dies (and doesn't just [become] nature) and the world ends. The main objective is to tire your opponent out or outsmart and pin them without killing them. This enables more cutscenes, more rewards, more information,etc. [It would largely follow] the main plot beats of the movie, but with extra stuff. Depending on where the player focuses their attention and what objectives they complete (or [what order they complete these objectives in]) decides which ending (other than the bad ending) that the player can get. For example, if the player focuses on trying to cure Ashitaka, you would get an ending where he's completely healed but San dies [or some other trade off where neglected parts of the story are left unresolved.] Choices affect whether Iron Town survives or not, etc. Theoretically if you played the correct/intended way, focusing on preserving as many lives as possible and stopping the war between nature and industry, you would get the canon ending to the movie.

[But h]onestly I think Princess Mononoke works best as a movie and the closest we would get to a game "set in the Universe of Princess Mononoke" would be, like, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. [Which already exist, so I'm not sure what novelty could be added that wouldn't just be aping the existing games.] So as much as I would like a game like that, I can see how a very valid reason to not make the Princess Mononoke game would be "the movie already says everything it wants to say perfectly and an interactive element doesn't really add much to the experience." As for the other potential games, in order of their listing above: Castle in the Sky: I think it would work best as a linear, narrative, adventure style game following the main story. Games currently are on a whole "expansive, open-world" kick, and I do enjoy that. I like sandboxes and running around collecting junk. But there's something about older games that, as a product of limited data available on cartridges, sort of railroaded you into doing things in order. There was a bit of flexibility. Collect-a-thons like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie had enough flexibility that you could beat the game by skipping entire levels completely. But a lot of games from that era had a pretty strict sequence that you had to go through to progress. Lots of stuff was locked behind getting certain upgrades. And there was something kind of nice about having the experience already planned out. I'm still not done with TotK even though I very clearly could be after over 200 hours in game, but I can complete all of Banjo-Kazooie in 2 days if I wanted to. Something like that for Castle in the Sky would work well.

It would follow the main story, of course, but you wouldn't be able to alter anything like the idea for Princess Mononoke. Gameplay would largely consist of exploring discrete levels, talking to relevant NPCs, and completing quests. Combat would be limited and would be based around avoiding injury and solving the problem with puzzles.

Nausicaa: Combination crafting/survival game and farming sim. You can befriend and tame Ohmu and Fox-squirrels. Loosely related to the plot but largely one of those "set in the world of" games. Nausicaa would be the ideal protagonist if we stick with the main plot, but honestly you could run it like Ark: Survival Evolved with single player and online multiplayer and have the player character be a customizable OC. I just think it would be really neat to run around and explore all the toxic forests and scavenge Ohmu shed exoskeletons like whalefalls.

Secret World of Arietty: Classic Collect-a-thon, maybe with hints of Pikmin and Chibi-Robo. I think part of the problem with basing the games off the movies is that people would want to see the main cast in them. I could definitely see this as one of those "in the world of" games, where your experience as the player runs parallel to the main events of the story but all the stuff we see in the movie happens off screen and we only intersect with it briefly. While the game could center around Arietty and her family, that sort of a game would be collect-a-thon heavy, I think. Each room of the house would be like a different level and you'd have to gather certain items from it. You could unlock different tools to traverse the environment with, too, like the earring climbing gear. But I can definitely see centering around a group of different Borrowers who have just moved into a new house, and they have to build up their own little home with the stuff you're able to "borrow" from the humans. Pikmin-esque elements could include delegating gathering tasks to certain Borrowers and the Chibi-Robo elements could involve a similar story to what we see in the movie, with the Borrowers slowly befriending the humans of the house.

Spirited Away: This is a hard one, not going to lie. The movie is so entrenched in the cultural consciousness as its own, complete thing that I'm not sure what the game would look like, other than just "it's literally just the events of the movie but with worse pacing to allow for player input, minigames, and quicktime events. Theoretically you could do one that's "in the world of" Spirited Away. But I think that game experience would just end up being "the movie, but boring and worse. The most satisfying gameplay option I can think of is honestly just Chibi-Robo/Viscera Cleanup Detail/Powerwash simulator where they build out detailed 3D environments from the movie and you get to go through and pick up trash and clean up.

Porco Rosso: Flight sim. Arcade style flight sim/shooter. Easy peasy. Innovative? No. Ground-breaking? No. But would it have classic, simple, gameplay with cute Ghibli paint? Yes. Yes it would.

My Neighbor Totoro: Linear Exploration with minigame elements. I don't know what it says about me that this is my first thought, but I'm literally thinking something like Tigger's Hunny Hunt for the Nintendo 64, only instead of a side scrolling platformer, it's 3D. And it has minigames. Like growing the giant tree could be a rhythm game. Catbus could be a Subway Surfer style runner minigame, etc. Howl's Moving Castle: This one's also tricky. "Set in the World of" might work better, since they could work off the themes of the book instead of just Howl and Sophie's story. A world where fairy-tale rules apply but the characters are aware of it. Action adventure game with linear progression of a hero that doesn't want to be the hero and a damsel in distress who just wants to be allowed to solve her own problems without the narrative punishing her for not waiting for her "prince charming." It still has the trappings and styling of the Ghibli film, of course, but the story wouldn't be about Howl and Sophie. But of course that runs into the issue of "Is it really Howl's Moving Castle if Howl and Sophie aren't in it?" But, like with Spirited Away, the narrative is kind of so focused and jam packed with slow, emotional scenes with the characters that, other than a visual novel, there's not much you can do to gamify the movie. And a visual novel is, in this case, "just the movie but boring and worse." Ponyo: Honestly my first thought was that old, tedious "Freddi Fish and Luther's Water Worries" game. And as fitting as that would be, NO THANK YOU, DEAR GOD. 100 levels of literally the exact same thing, eugh. I remember being so mad that the only "reward" you got for beating all those long boring levels was a crappy cutscene that would have been fun after level 20 but felt like a slap in the face after 100 goddamn levels. And then my immediate thought after that was a "Who's Your Daddy?" style gameplay where one person plays as Ponyo and the other plays as Fujimoto, and Ponyo's goal is to grab Sosuke and RUN and it's Fujimoto's objective to basically kidnap her back to the sea because he's not letting his daughter have any fun. By which I mean he's not letting a supernatural force of nature with the mind of a child destroy the entire world on accident. XD But Honestly? Windwaker style gameplay that exists IN THE IMAGINATION of Sosuke and Ponyo, post-movie. You can do literally anything. Because it's two kids playing pretend with each other so whatever happens in the game can be as zany and silly as you want, because it's literally being made up by kids. The treasure chest on the Island of Laundry is full of ham? Of course it is. Ponyo would think of that. The evil giant kraken's main mission in life is to ruin your fun by enforcing bed time? Of course it is. That's how moms are sometimes.

Kiki's Delivery Service: Take "Death Stranding" but make it cute and soft and pastel. That's it. You did it. Maybe add in some cooking minigames you can use to get buffs. But literally just... deliver packages. Maybe some slight Animal Crossing vibes where you slowly befriend the villagers that you deliver to and learn more about them and help them with their problems.

Anyway, that's it! Those are my ideas. Obviously there's nothing new under the sun so a lot of this is literally just "take an existing game but reskin it to be Ghibli." But that's part of why I'm not in game design. I am not an innovator or an inventor. Literally my favorite thing to do is to take existing things and tweak them and mash them together. That's why I write fanfiction. But Disney built their brand on that and it's literally a human tradition to go "I like this thing. What if I did the same thing but in pink? And 2 inches to the left. Perfect." So yes. Prokopetz I am not, sadly. I will never be behind the newest Nintendo Patent for a new game mechanic or what-have-you. But thank god for that, honestly. I am here doing the word version of playing with Lego. I know how the pieces work. I know the tropes and the words and the genres. I just mash the fun things together and see what sticks. So thank you for thinking of me and what my rock-tumbler of a brain might spit out. If you find any shiny rocks in the pile of my brain dust, good! You can keep them. :) I am by no means the world-class chef thinking up things like asparagus chocolates and making them good somehow. I am just that gremlin in the corner that slaps the right veggies and cheeses in the pot and makes a tasty soup or a banging whitesauce somehow. I am not inventing, but I sure do know how to make existing things in pink and 2 inches to the left.

Studio Ghibli Game Idea Question

From the Page of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind from TVTropes;

"Three video game adaptations of Nausicaä were released for the MSX; two were top-down shooters but where Nausicaä does negotiations with human villages to prevent war and drops stun bombs (NOT regular bombs) on Ohmus as a strict self-defense measure. They were, however, mediocre in their gameplay, and flopped. As a result, not counting Future Boy Conan videogame adaptations, no further games based on Studio Ghibli works were produced (not that it kept the studio from doing the art direction for other games, like Jade Cocoon for the PS1, among others). A very common Urban Legend has it that those games greatly offended Miyazaki, based on the wrong assumption that the games openly subverted the message of his film. Interviews following Ni no Kuni's release, and an actual look on those rare games by Hardcore Gaming 101, debunked these rumors, with Studio Ghibli even being open to a Castle in the Sky adaptation."

Note: I also included what these could be Rated from E (Everyone), E10 (Everyone 10 and Up), T (Teen) or M (Mature). Feel free to explain which movie could be made into what genre of game (open world, platformer, adventure, etc.) in the reblog or comments section below.

[galadriel-blue]

The Adar is Celeborn theory is becoming my entire personality you guys have no idea how obsessed I am with that concept-

[butchratchettruther]

Silly unfinished sketch of what I think the Mallard (the steam train that holds the world speed record for steam locomotives) would look like in starlight express

This is the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard

[ghostradiodylan]

I like cutting Dylan’s hand off for the drama it brings to his character arc, but the alternative has its charms because he gets to have this little moment before the human murder spree that is Laura comes along.

[oflights]

there's no way quidditch is actually fun imo. like i know the seeker thing and how illogical it is has been talked to death but the whole overall concept is so stupid. imagine you're a world class chaser and you're amazing and everything you do is invalidated (or validated) by the performance of one specific player who has nothing else to do with the rest of the players. you have good stats but your win record means absolutely nothing.

there's little strategy; a good defense depends entirely the keeper, which is another way all the positions are just completely disconnected from each other. they could all be playing different sports and nothing would make a difference. beaters are there for Violence ("ethically mean-spirited"). god there are so many bludger moments in fic (and in the books too tbh) that are so dramatic and injurious and it's literally just the beaters playing their stupid position the way they're meant to lol.

i know the reasonings behind this are like: jkr fundamentally doesn't understand sports in even basic ways; the seeker position has to be for The Most Special Guy and that has to be harry always because he wouldn't be Special Enough if the entire game didn't ride on his shoulders; jkr is a bad writer. very annoying that this huge insidious piece of worldbuilding is so bad!!!

[shaydh]

People on here be like "You can't call that toxic yaoi it's not yaoi it's a power imbalance!!" yeah...that's why its toxic

[nordsea-horizons]

already having theme crisis on my new island.. alternative version of the idea - adding construction items and rustic stuff to really get the feel of a community being build from scratch🪴

[guesst]

sometimes i think about sullivan and how his n iruma’s relationship progresses and what made him choose iruma. i mean it was probably something to do with delkira that made him pick iruma up but i also think about that comment he makes early on in the series, that the others in the 3 greats have grandkids and he doesnt and how hed love to have a grandkid. and how he sends iruma to babyls partly because thats what a proper caretaker is meant to do. and how at the beginning maybe hes playacting and thinking yes this is the boy i have brought over for unspecified reasons, My Grandson, and i am the Grandfather (yay!) but its only later on that The Grandson becomes Iruma Suzuki first and then Sullivan’s Grandson second. and then i get happy about it

[plusultraetc]

okay but what if seeing quirkless pro hero Deku on the news inspires quirkless former-pro Takami Keigo to try the whole hero thing again, but this time on his own terms