#wanting to share in my excitement for being 3 for 3 on the “big splatfest” teams? unallowed apparently

[ashenxrogue]

things to add to my never-ending list of "shit that people have told me/ive seen be called a spoiler"

announcing the winner of the splatfest

no i dont fucking get it

[superjumpintomyheart]

Why Splatoon means so much to me

Hey guys, with tomorrow being my brothers birthday, I decided I would share a very important story with you. This is the story of why the Splatoon franchise means so much to me, and why I hold it very near to my heart.

I’ll never forget the day in May of 2015 when Splatoon was released, my older brother had pre ordered it for me and I played it immediately when I got home from school. I was fascinated with it from the moment I saw the first loading screen, and even more so when I started playing turf war. It’s crazy to think that was so long ago, when Callie and Marie were the only idols we knew, when ink strikes and killer wails were in our special gauges, when Judd was the only judge. When Spyke was the go to for anything gear related and you couldn’t skip Sheldon’s dialogue, when Annie ran the hat shop and Crusty Sean wasn’t working a food truck. When the max level was 50 and you had one rank for everything, when becoming agent 3 and defeating DJ Octavio felt like the biggest accomplishment you could achieve, and at the end of the day there were splatfests. Cats versus dogs, roller coasters versus water slides, and finally Callie versus Marie. It all feels like a distant memory now, like I’m Agent 8 and my days in Splatoon are just a mem cake.

All my life, the one thing that bonded me and my big brother were video games. We’re 16 years apart, but he never failed to help me through all the Mario games and let me watch him beat all the Zelda games in an absurdly short amount of time. We would play Super Smash Bros all the time, first on the N64 and the nthe Wii when Brawl came out. When Splatoon released we were ecstatic. He had recently moved out and I had missed playing video games with him. Instead of being just a walk to his room away, he was a car ride away. But now with a new online multiplayer, we could play together all the time, and we did. We FaceTimed while we joined each other in turf war, battling fiercely against each other or working incredibly well together. Splatfests were amazing, and the Sunday after each one I’d run up to him at church and ask him who won if I didn’t have time to check that morning. He would come over to do his laundry and take turns playing Splatoon with me, it was back then in those times when everything was a lot simpler.

I’ll never forget the day in March of 2016 when I found out my big brother had died at 29 years old. Passed out from a migraine and suffocated in his bedroom, an accidental death. From that point forward there was no Splatoon battles, no FaceTime, no Splatfest all nighters, just silence. Silence as I sat in my basement and stared at my Wii U, the one he bought for us as a family for Christmas so we could play video games when he moved out and took his console with him. Silence as I stared at his miiverse posts, realizing that all his internet friends would never know what happened to him. Silence as I stopped playing Splatoon for a whole year, because without him it wasn’t the same. And it never would be again.

The Nintendo Switch had released as well as Splatoon 2, but it took me until this year to buy both things. Why? Because the Octo Expansion had just been announced, and I had a friend with a Nintendo Switch who I soon convinced to try Splatoon and play it with me. I bought my switch in the middle of May of 2018 and the first game I owned was Splatoon 2. It took two years of grieving to finally get my head back in the game, but now that I am back, I’ve never felt better.

I reached rank S in splat zones a while back, and it was a moment that filled me with both happiness and nostalgia. I was never able to get past rank A in Splatoon 1, while my brother was able to max out his rank. Getting to rank S was something that I never thought was possible, but I did it for him. Because I know he would be congratulating me for getting so far, complimenting me and saying, “You’re gettin’ pretty good sis!”

Even though I can’t hear those words, I can feel them. My brother was and is the other half of my soul, my best friend, my partner in crime, if there’s one thing he wanted it was to make other people happy with whatever he did. It would have broken his heart to hear that I stopped playing a game we both loved because it brought me too much pain to do so. But now... I’m happy. I can pick up my switch and be excited to play Splatoon 2 or Mario Kart 8, it took a long time to get here, but I made it.

This franchise, in the few years it’s been alive, has completely changed my life in so many ways. It bonded me and my only brother even after we couldn’t see each other as often, it built me back up after I felt I had been broken for too long, and it brought me to where I am today. For that, I can only say thank you to the community and Nintendo for every game they have ever made, including Splatoon, and allowing a pair of siblings to create a bond so strong not even death could break it.