the marbles

I’m sorry I kinda stole your dog Shepherd, I love you… 😭

You realize what they took from us? Absolutely heart-wrenchingly amazing character development. Shepherd has a major character arc OFF SCREEN. And even if she does return in a future game, how can you beat “I’m finally happy to be me!”? Oh yeah, doesn’t sound familiar? Those were in her diary entries. Which you’re not forced to read. VERY off screen for such a MAJOR development, you think? Oops, I turned into Bernard for a moment there.

I believe this is one reason why there’s people who don’t like Shepherd. The game is horrible at telling you what she’s like, unless you go out of your way to figure that out, so people get incorrect assumptions about her. They can get away with this because we don’t play as her.

To be the number one Shepherd fan you must process what they took from us. What they took from her. Ohhhhhhhhhghhgg

Doggy bonding time. Becoming more confident in your skills as a leader. Feeling the relief of saving someone BY HAND. Her existing character arc would make more sense if she was the one getting out there, not this rookie. Oouhhhhggh.

Also, you know how Shepherd is scared of most animals that aren't dogs, including Pikmin? Kinda strange why she'd be scared of such adorable little creatures. I don't remember if there's a lore reason as to why, but from a dev's perspective, it's probably to give an excuse for the captain not going on expeditions with the player character, heck, even for the player character.

It seems as if the Rescue Corps aren't as important as they're supposed to be, especially Shepherd since she's the captain. I wonder why Nintendo wanted a character creator for the main character. maybe to sell the idea of picturing yourself in the Pikmin universe? Imma be honest Pikmin 4 feels like a straight-up self-insert AU, and it's crazy how people are making more self-inset AUs out of the already seemingly self-inset AU. I'm getting off-track here.

Back to Shepherd, I could also see why they didn't give her more "screen time," since the game is already suuuuper long, it kinda makes sense that they wouldn't add everything that was supposed to be in the game, and since they thought that things should revolve around the mindless rookie (not an insult I promise) instead of one of the characters that have given personalities. like SHEPHERD.

I’ve been thinking of redoing the script for the unfinished video essay on her, too… mainly to change focus to be broader. If it ever does it get made, it’ll also be about what they did well with her, and also how Pikmin’s writing reflects its audience (negatively!). There is a lot to unpack about Shepherd…

it's come to my attention that rain world has recently partnered with a company known as ludeo for the game's newest update. this was tucked away in the replies of their rain world art month post

ludeo is an israeli company run by two brothers based in tel-aviv. this is incredibly disappointing and fucked up to be doing during the on-going genocide israel is committing in palestine and the surrounding regions and i quite frankly do not care if it turns out this was just down to "poor research" and was an "accident": you can quite literally look up the two founders' names on linkedin and find out where they are based in under a minute. there are no excuses for this

another point of note about ludeo that i find upsetting is that a lot if not all of the images used on the company's site to advertise this product are 99.9% guaranteed to be ai-generated

while this is absolutely not the main issue at hand here as promoting your partnership with this company at this time is already fucked up enough to begin with, going and hiding this post within the replies of another promoting your art month event to the artists within this community is so astoundingly ironic and ignorant

i am not trying to suggest that there are alterior motives behind putting this post in the replies of another about a community event rather than making an entirely new and separate one dedicated exclusively to information about this update, but i do find it strange. i woke up to finding out about this and was absolutely livid, and while what's done is already done, i am hoping whoever was responsible for this knows how fucked it is to be promoting this company at this time, or just in general. i am not trying to start a witch hunt or start shit for the sake of starting shit, but i think this needs to be addressed and spoken about, as money towards israel is money towards more bloodshed and violence in palestine. this shit makes my blood fucking boil

edit: i feel like i should also put this here if this wasn't already terrible enough

please continue sharing support for palestine. links below are sites and donation links that go directly towards supporting palestinian people in need

resources for palestine

resources for palestine (2)

operation olive branch, a spreadsheet full of families trying to escape rafah, in case you can donate

twitter thread of fundraisers for palestine

daily click for palestine

info post about sudan

twitter thread about sudan

twitter post for the DRC

friends of the congo, a list of helpful actions you can take for the DRC

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cause as someone whos really uncomfy around dogs half my pikmin 4 experience is just "me and my beloved pikmin!!!! and that thing the game forces us to use :/"

like oatchi is conflicting to me. i think hes a really good idea for a game mechanic- having a ridable companion that can jump so all your pikmin can be in one place and travel to elevated heights is a reallyyy fun idea! also, having oatchi be able to have similar abilities to pikmin means every pikmin type can be in the game without the risk of the player having to backtrack or carry a ton of different pikmin types. however, this is a double edged sword as oatchi often overshadows the pikmin, both in gameplay and plot (MY GOODNESS NOBODY N THIS GAME EXCEPT OLIMAR CARES ABOUT THE PIKMIN AT ALL PLEASE MENTION THEM AT LEAST ONCE???). also. you cant beat the game without oatchi. you Have to use oatchi. you do not have an option. its not a choice. even if you switch to oatchi and run away and switch back to the captain, you'll eventually run into some obstacle that has no reason to exist other than forcing you to use oatchi.

but like... maybe its also cause hes a dog and that makes me naturally uncomfy, maybe if he was a neat little kitty id be like "awww the silly hehe me and my silly guy and our pikmin army" and id enjoy the game a lot more