The more I think about Wildmender the more I grow invested in it. It's a fascinating interpretation of terra nil and solarpunk since so often the genre is fundamentally rooted in settler-colonialist philosophy, and even games which are intended to be the opposite of that--terra nil comes to mind as the obvious one--just end up actually revealing a different side of the factorio problem, because terra nil is an incredible impersonal restoration of ecological systems. Terra Nil acknowledges climate destruction on a global catastrophic scale and it accepts the responsibility to fix that, but it isn't shown as a human act, nor does it really allow itself the realism of just how terrifyingly impossible the task is to try and literally fix the entire world. Its game structure is supposed to be the anti-factorio but its puzzle structures focusing on efficiency and robotic engineering patterns of rewilding end up feeling more like a dialogue than an inversion. It's trying to say that the idea of humanity as fundamentally destructive is wrong while it doesn't actually ever address the human element.
And then there's fucking Wildmender. A game where you are a single human child in a world of endless wasteland and death, where the only other things are ghosts who remember a halcyon era and the hubris that ended it, wraiths which are consumed by their own greed and destruction of the land for their cursed immortality, and a couple god statues. The entire map is just ceaseless grief, filled with the literal dessicated remains of all the biodiversity that came before the countless disasters. And it's a big fucking map.
And then...the game gives you a shovel and a sickle and a mirror that shows the wraiths what twisted reflections they've become.
And the game says, "The entire world is waiting to be better, and the only way to do that is by doing it yourself, long and hard and hopeless as it seems."
I cannot emphasize enough how overwhelming the task you're handed. There is not a single speck of life left in the world. You are given a shovel and a water bottle and just...expected to do something about it. To look at the literal endless wastes and think you can heal it.
This is what Wildmender cherishes that Terra Nil denies: This is an impossible task for you alone. But it has to be done...and you can actually do it. The way you can turn sand into soil and dig irrigation channels is beautiful. Every single scrap of land that you reclaim is something you had to do on purpose. You had to do it yourself. You had to actively choose how to do it.
And the game makes the reward of even just getting a bit more water into the sand feel like victory. Your starting oasis turns from soil into lush and beautiful meadows--sure, technically instantaneously by doing magic on a specific type of plant. But it took me 4-5 hours before I got there. You have to travel so far into the desert to learn how to grow grass again, and then you realize that this endless hostile wasteland is a fraction of the map you're given. And you look at this sudden profusion of meadowy grassland surrounding your spring and despite how sudden it feels you remember how big the world is. You made more progress in a minute than you did in 5 hours and it's not even a speck on the map. How the fuck is this gonna happen?
And the answer is by accepting that it's going to take a long fucking time and a lot of hard work.
That's how it's gonna happen. Get to work.
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Imagine if tarrows forgot shes not a slugcat, and absent mindedly tried to store a pearl in her stomach for safekeeping and nearly choking.
the only time i can imagine it happening is before Sparrows would leave the Void Pools cuz otherwise she has that fuckin.. rebreather mask constantly on. it would tunk against that before it'd get the chance to get into her mouth. so here's some ouchies
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Listen I'm not gonna pretend that the 2010s-2020s don't have plenty of bodyshaming unpleasantness of their own, but if anyone starts reviving the PARTICULAR brand of fatphobia that ruled the early 2000s to try and fuck up the body image/relationships with food of the little girls of today like they did with the little girls back then, I'm killing them with my bare hands.
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Man. I just get so actually legitimately sad each time I remember that toh ended and that we live in the post-toh world. Like it really is over.
Ms Dana Terrace has said that she'd like to do more given the chance (and after some quality time off of bigger projects, just to chill), but as far as we know, it's the end.
Heck, we barely got anything after the final episode, no books, no special merch, no dedicated little chibi shorts, nothing really, aside from the, thankfully fun, get-togethers of the cast and crew!
Idk. Ah well actually nah, I do know, that this show just meant an enormous lot to me. Incredibly huge, the kind that you can't break away from and wouldn't want to anyway. The kind that feels like, man, where would I be without it.
Happy 1 Year, to the end of The Owl House. Thank you, The Owl House.
I hope the future is bright, for all of us.
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