Juushika Plays

Recent, high fidelity games may be playable on but will probably look like garbage on a Switch. Older or more stylized games will probaby be just fine on the Switch. Stylized graphics (pixel art, cell shaded, anything obviously not trying to be photorealistic) is probably a sign that you're good to go.

Nintendo does not make their IPs available on other platforms, so the real benefit to owning a Switch is being able to play Nintendo games, franchises like: Kirby, Mario, Yoshi, Zelda. The more modern the Nintendo game, the more accessible it's going to be to a less experienced gamer: accessibility settings, no life system, things like that. The more retro the title, the less accessible it's likely to be (one shot kills, precise platforming, limited lives). ~2017 is going to be the tipping point, although Zelda titles and Kirby titles are generally more forgiving in general, and, pre-2017, newer will generally mean more accessible.

Unlike most games and consoles, Nintendo does not depreciate the value of their products over time, so if Switch games feel expensive, it's because they are, including used games. Digital games may go on sale. The Switch has relatively little storage, which can be annoying but not impossible to micromanage.

Nintendo has a fairly inexpensive subscription service that allows you to play their back catalog of games. It's a good catalog, but whether or not you'll play it depends on your appetite for retro games. Retro Pokemon, Kirby, and Zelda, in that order order, are pretty accessible.

All that being said, here are my favorite Switch games/games I trust to be good on the Switch! In no order:

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (puzzle) Pokemon Sword/Shield (turn-based) The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Breath of the Wild, The Minish Cap (subscription), honestly any title but the oldest pixel-art titles may be harder (adventure, hack and slash) Kirby mainline series, any and all, but my favorites in order: Return to Dreamland, Forgotten Land, Dreamland 3 (subscription) (these are all platformers) Pikmin series (controls are slightly more demanding) (real time puzzle) Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World and Yoshi's Crafted World (platformers) Animal Crossing: New Horizons (life simulator) Mario Odyssey (platformer) Deemo (rhythm) Wilmot's Warehouse (puzzle) Chicory (narrative/puzzle) Chants of Sennaar (puzzle) Untitled Goose Game (puzzle) Tunic (significant difficulty increase compared to other recommendations) (Zelda: hard mode) Outer Wilds (moderate difficulty increase compared to other recommendations) (adventure, puzzle) Phogs (platformer) The Wild at Heart (Pikmin-alike) Luigi's Mansion series (exploration, puzzle) Stardew Valley (life sim) Corpse Party (narrative/horror) Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (puzzle) The World Ends With You (RPG, controls may be demanding) Slime Rancher (life sim)

Would love to hear your paradigmatic examples of texts (books, movies, tv, fic for any fandom, whatever) handling questions of what I like to call vampire attachment theory (tag) - vampires' relationships with their makers/sires, with their vampire siblings, etcetera.

Compromise was a significant turning point for me and has retroactively affected how actively I look for/at inter-vampire dynamics in media. I feel like a lot of my favorite vampire narratives are vampire/mortal dynamics, and many of them are the seduction of a mortal in a way that feels an aborted precursor to vampire-making; still love that trope, but I'm more invested in the aftermath having read your fiction & being exposed to your vampire attachment theory tag!

My prior landmark was Interview with the Vampire, first few books & 1994 film particularly; Louis, Lestat, and Claudia specifically; other parts didn't seep into by subconscious in the same way re: setting my expectations for ... how these relationships probably functioned, I guess? Namely that the act of vampire creation is probably multi-step (murder + transformation), therefore the relationship is always violent + creative, and the door is easily opened to complicated dynamics like two different people filling the two different/interconnected roles.

Then Hemlock Grove (book and show), which I find less pivotal but more a take on it I hadn't seen. Vampirism is inherited but also transformational: the vampire comes of age and into their full powers via suicide. Roman's mother is his literal parent, but also architects the series of events that lead to that transformative death/rebirth, but the act itself is autonomous and self-wrought. I like the circularity, there, but don't know that I think a lot about it in context of other vampire narratives.

I love the Spike/Angel/Drusilla dynamic in BtVS, but didn't think a lot about vampire attachment theory in BtVS until I started writing fic for Tara/vamp!Willow. I don't know if "my own unfinished fic" is a useful answer to your question, but digging into vamp!Willow meant feeling around for my gut answers to a lot of the throwaway, half-assed lore in BtVS (positive, affectionate, I don't really mind it plays fast and lose with worldbuilding): how a personality transforms when losing the soul/becoming a demon; what differentiates a sire/fledgling relationship which is a lifelong bond from make-your-own-minion. Dru offers the most insight into most of these questions IMO, and I pay a lot of attention to her when rewatching.

Fuco Ueda

@juushika recommended it as a premise that seemed crafted perfectly to my tastes, and she was totally right; ~50 pages in, one of the vampire concubines was undressing one of the others while she told her that she didn't have to be shy in front of her because they were family now, and I messaged @juushika that it felt sort of like I had written it at 15. While the execution left something to be desired, I was rather astounded that it exists.

The novel takes place in a rather vaguely established fantasy world at loosely Victorian levels of technology, in which it is commonplace for the nobility to consume human blood as a means of maintaining their health and beauty, employing "bloodmaids" for this purpose in an unofficially sexualized indentured concubine role. Our protagonist, Marion, takes one of these jobs to get herself out of poverty, only to find herself increasingly infatuated with her employer, the enigmatic Lisavet.

Most of my problems with the novel came down to the fact that its focus wasn't where I would have wanted it. I was fascinated by the idea of a society in which this consumption of the blood of the poor by the rich was literal, normalized, and fetishized (the role of bloodmaid is considered both vaguely shameful by the rest of the non-aristocrats and also a desirable site of fascination), and I felt the novel could have done much more to spin out the implications of it. The plot involves Lisavet having a supernatural secret which is meant to be a betrayal that makes the whole thing more horrifying, but - it was already horrifying enough as it is! Why couldn't we just stick with the premise as it stood and develop the characters from there? The rushed reveals and denouement left a number of the most interesting elements of the story unresolved, giving us instead some unsatisfying action sequences.

The other place where I was left unsatisfied was around the relationships between the concubine characters, which I wanted to be much more the center of the story. We get a lot of hierarchy and rivalry dynamics between them; as some may recall, rivalries between co-victims are among the things I find most upsetting to read about, but that doesn't mean it's an inherently bad narrative choice, or one that I'm uninterested in grappling with. The way those rivalries played out, though, I found overly predictable and trite. Our protagonist has a realization towards the end that Lisavet has deliberately created the rivalries to separate the women from one another, but this revelation, which should have been a cathartic emotional climax, was rushed and unearned. Each of the women was also too one-note in personality ("the crazy jealous one"; "the calm, kind one" "the vapid, childish one"), despite my fervent wish to see more in each of them.

Our thoughts are very similar! I feel like it's a premise that I'd love to see reexecuted in fan works, because the world is great but this particular journey through it is kind of whatever.

And I think that some of what undermines it is the attempt, in a published novel, to make definite and therefore not especially nuanced commentary about the social implications of the premise. Lisavet is rendered an over the top supernatural antagonist, her powers so exaggerated, so that there's no doubt that what she's doing is capital-b Bad. I think there's an understandable motive there, especially since dark fantasy (especially YA-adjacent dark fantasy, because the romance in particular gave me some YA vibes) tends to invite romanticization of tragic dark love interests, and Henderson wants to indulge that but also come down hard on a correct reading.

Which, as you say, isn't necessary, because the premise in itself is horrific! And so much more nuanced than the execution. I'd love to see a not-special-snowflake narrative within the world, a bloodmaid who doesn't necessarily have the most refined taste, a Count/Countess who isn't apparently the origin of the whole social structure, but just participant in it.

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[ID: fist image: a digital drawing of a black furr ball with tiny trangular legs, triangle kitty ears, one cat eye in the middle of it’s face and a small tail.